ENCYCLOPEDIA OF WORLD HISTORY The Contemporary World 1950 to the Present
VOLUME VI
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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF WORLD HISTORY The Contemporary World 1950 to the Present
VOLUME VI
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF WORLD HISTORY Volume I The Ancient World Prehistoric Eras to 600 c.e. Volume II The Expanding World 600 c.e. to 1450 Volume III The First Global Age 1450 to 1750 Volume IV Age of Revolution and Empire 1750 to 1900 Volume V Crisis and Achievement 1900 to 1950 Volume VI The Contemporary World 1950 to the Present Volume VII Primary Documents Master Index
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF WORLD HISTORY The Contemporary World 1950 to the Present
VOLUME VI edited by Marsha E. Ackermann Michael J. Schroeder Janice J. Terry Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur Mark F. Whitters
Encyclopedia of World History Copyright © 2008 by Marsha E. Ackermann, Michael J. Schroeder, Janice J. Terry, Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur, and Mark F. Whitters. Maps copyright © 2008 by Infobase Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information contact: Facts On File, Inc. An imprint of Infobase Publishing 132 West 31st Street New York NY 10001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Encyclopedia of world history / edited by Marsha E. Ackermann . . . [et al.]. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8160-6386-4 (hc : alk. paper) 1. World history—Encyclopedias. I. Ackermann, Marsha E. D21.E5775 2007 903–dc22 2007005158 Facts On File books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk quantities for businesses, associations, institutions, or sales promotions. Please call our Special Sales Department in New York at (212) 967-8800 or (800) 322-8755. You can find Facts On File on the World Wide Web at http://www.factsonfile.com Maps by Dale E. Williams and Jeremy Eagle Golson Books, Ltd. President and Editor Design Director Author Manager Layout Editor Indexer
J. Geoffrey Golson Mary Jo Scibetta Sue Moskowitz Susan Honeywell J S Editorial
Printed in the United States of America VB GB 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is printed on acid-free paper.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF WORLD HISTORY Volume VI CONTENTS About the Editors Foreword Historical Atlas List of Articles List of Contributors Chronology Major Themes Articles A to Z Resource Guide Index
vi vii viii ix xv xix xxxi 1–476 477 481
About the Editors Marsha E. Ackermann received a Ph.D. in American culture from the University of Michigan. She is the author of the award-winning book Cool Comfort: America’s Romance with Air-Conditioning and has taught U.S. history and related topics at the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, and Eastern Michigan University. Michael J. Schroeder received a Ph.D. in history from the University of Michigan and currently teaches at Eastern Michigan University. Author of the textbook The New Immigrants: Mexican Americans, he has published numerous articles on Latin American history. Janice J. Terry received a Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and is professor emeritus of Middle East history at Eastern Michigan University. Her latest book is U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East: The Role of Lobbies and Special Interest Groups. She is also a coauthor of the world history textbooks The 20th Century: A Brief Global History and World History. Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur received a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and is professor emeritus of Chinese history at Eastern Michigan University. She is a coauthor of the world history textbooks The 20th Century: A Brief Global History and World History. Mark F. Whitters received a Ph.D. in religion and history from The Catholic University of America and currently teaches at Eastern Michigan University. His publications include The Epistle of Second Baruch: A Study in Form and Message.
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Foreword The seven-volume Encyclopedia of World History is a comprehensive reference to the most important events, themes, and personalities in world history. The encyclopedia covers the entire range of human history in chronological order—from the prehistoric eras and early civilizations to our contemporary age—using six time periods that will be familiar to students and teachers of world history. This reference work provides a resource for students—and the general public—with content that is closely aligned to the National Standards for World History and the College Board’s Advanced Placement World History course, both of which have been widely adopted by states and school districts. This encyclopedia is one of the first to offer a balanced presentation of human history for a truly global perspective of the past. Each of the six chronological volumes begins with an in-depth essay that covers five themes common to all periods of world history. They discuss such important issues as technological progress, agriculture and food production, warfare, trade and cultural interactions, and social and class relationships. These major themes allow the reader to follow the development of the world’s major regions and civilizations and make comparisons across time and place. The encyclopedia was edited by a team of five accomplished historians chosen because they are specialists in different areas and eras of world history, as well as having taught world history in the classroom. They and many other experts are responsible for writing the approximately 2,000 signed entries based on the latest scholarship. Additionally each article is cross-referenced with relevant other ones in that volume. A chronology is included to provide students with a chronological reference to major events in the given era. In each volume an array of full-color maps provides geographic context, while numerous illustrations provide visual contexts to the material. Each article also concludes with a bibliography of several readily available pertinent reference works in English. Historical documents included in the seventh volume provide the reader with primary sources, a feature that is especially important for students. Each volume also includes its own index, while the seventh volume contains a master index for the set. Marsha E. Ackermann Michael J. Schroeder Janice J. Terry Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur Mark F. Whitters Eastern Michigan University
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Historical Atlas List of Maps
The Cold War, 1946–1991 China—Border Disputes and the Cultural Revolution, 1948–1983 Indochina War, 1946–1954 The Korean War, 1950–1953 Suez Canal Crisis, 1956 African Independence The U.S. and Latin America, 1954–2000 Israel following the 1967 War Racial Unrest and Segregation in America, 1965–1968 South Africa under Apartheid The Vietnam War Return of the Sinai to Egypt, 1975–1982 Governments of the Middle East and North Africa The Collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, 1989–1991 Persian Gulf War, 1991 The United Nations and the World Asia: Wars, Political Unrest, and Territorial Disputes, 1945–Present International Organizations Major Regional Trading Groups The Kyoto Protocol and CO2 Emissions Yugoslavia, 1945–2006 Oil Supply and Demand Transportation and Infrastructure in the Modern World Natural and Man-Made Environmental Disasters Weapons of Mass Destruction, 2007 Decolonization in South and Southeast Asia, 1947–2000 Religion in the Modern World Major Terrorist Attacks since 1979 The Spread of Democracy and Women’s Suffrage Air Campaign in Kosovo, March 25–June 20, 1999
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M161 M162 M163 M164 M165 M166 M167 M168 M169 M170 M171 M172 M173 M174 M175 M176–177 M178 M179 M180 M181 M182 M183 M184 M185 M186 M187 M188 M189 M190–191 M192
List of Articles A Afghanistan African National Congress (ANC) African Union AIDS crisis Akihito Algerian revolution Allende, Salvador Alliance for Progress American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) American Indian Movement (AIM) Angola, Republic of ANZUS Treaty appropriate technology Arab-Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations Arab-Israeli War (1956) Arab-Israeli War (1967) Arab-Israeli War (1973) Arab-Israeli War (1982) Arafat, Yasir Arévalo, Juan José Argentina, Madres de Plaza de Mayo Aristide, Jean-Bertrand Armenia and Azerbaijan arms race/atomic weapons
art and architecture Asian Development Bank Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Assad, Hafez alAssociation of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Aswa¯n Dam Aung San Suu Kyi Awami League Ayub Khan, Muhammad B Ba’ath Party baby boom, U.S. Baghdad Pact/CENTO Balkans (1991–present) Baltic States (1991–present) Banda, Hastings Bandung Conference (Asian-African Conference) Bangladesh, People’s Republic of Bay of Pigs Beat movement Berlin blockade/airlift Betancourt, Rómulo Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX) Bhutto, Benazir ix
List of Articles
Bhutto, Zulfikar Biafran War (1967–1970) biblical inerrancy Black Power movement Bolivian revolution (1952–1964) Bosch, Juan Bourguiba, Habib Bracero Program (1942–1964) Brazil, military dictatorship in (1964–1985) Brezhnev, Leonid Ilyich Brown v. Board of Education Bush, George H.W. Bush, George W. C Canada after 1950 Caribbean Basin Initiative Carter, Jimmy Castro, Fidel Central Asia after 1991 Chávez, Hugo Chiang Ching-kuo “Chicago Boys” (Chilean economists, 1973–1980s) China, human rights and dissidents in China, People’s Republic of Chinese-Vietnamese conflict Civil Rights movement, U.S. Clinton, Bill (1946– ) and Hillary Rodham (1947– ) cold war Colombia, La Violencia in (1946–1966) Comecon Commonwealth of Nations contra war (Nicaragua, 1980s) counterculture in the United States and Europe Cuban migration to the United States Cuban missile crisis (October 1962) Cuban revolution (1959– ) Cyprus, independence of Cyprus, Turkish invasion of D Dalai Lama, 14th (Tenzin Gyatso) Darfur Day, Dorothy Democratic Progressive Party and Chen Shui-bian (Chen Shui-pien) Democratic Republic of the Congo (Zaïre) Deng Xiaoping (Teng Hsiao-p’ing) disarmament, nuclear drug wars, international
Dutch New Guinea/West Irian Duvalier dictatorship (Haiti, 1957–1986) E Eastern bloc, collapse of the East Timor Ebadi, Shirin Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) ecumenical movement Egyptian revolution (1952) El Salvador, revolution and civil war in (1970s– 1990s) environmental disasters (anthropogenic) environmental problems Equal Rights Amendment Eritrea Ethiopia, Federal Democratic Republic of European Economic Community/Common Market European Union F Falklands War (1982) Falun Gong Fanon, Frantz feminism, worldwide Fonseca Amador, Carlos Ford, Gerald Free Speech Movement FRELIMO G Gaitán, Jorge Eliécer Gandhi, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv, and Sonia S. Gang of Four and Jiang Qing (Chiang Ch’ing) Gaulle, Charles de gay liberation movements General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) Germany (post–World War II) Ghana globalization Gorbachev, Mikhail Graham, Billy Great Leap Forward in China (1958–1961) Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China (1966–1976) Great Society (U.S.) Greek Junta Green Revolution Grenada, U.S. invasion of (1983) Guatemala, civil war in (1960–1996)
Guevara, Ernesto “Che” Gulf War, First (1991) Gulf War, Second (Iraq War) H Hamas Hável, Vaclav Hizbollah Ho Chi Minh Hong Kong Horn of Africa Hu Jintao (Hu Chin-t’ao) Hu Yaobang (Hu Yao-pang) Huk Rebellion Hundred Flowers Campaign in China (1956–1957) Hungarian revolt (1956) Hussein, Saddam I India Indochina War (First and Second) Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) Indo-Pakistani Wars (Kashmir) Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) International Monetary Fund (IMF) interstate highway system, U.S. Intifada (first) Intifada, al-Aqsa Iran, contemporary Iran-contra affair Iran hostage crisis Iranian revolution Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988) Iraq revolution (1958) Iraq War Irish Republican Army (IRA) Islamist movements J Janata Party Al Jazeera Jesus movement Jiang Zemin (Chiang Tse-min) John Paul II Johnson, Lyndon B. Jordan, Hashemite monarchy in K Karmal, Babrak Karzai, Hamid Kaunda, Kenneth
List of Articles Kennedy, John F. Kenya Kenyatta, Jomo Khan, Liaquat Ali Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khrushchev, Nikita Kim Il Sung (1912–1994)/Kim Jong Il (1942– ) King, Martin Luther, Jr. Koizumi, Junichiro Korea, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Republic of Korean War (1950–1953) Kubitschek, Juscelino Kurds Kuwait Kyoto Treaty L Latin American culture Latin American politics Latin American social issues Lebanese civil war Liberal Democratic Party (Japan) Liberian civil wars (1989–1996 and 1999–2003) Libya Lin Biao (Lin Piao) literature Li Zongren (Li Tsung-jen) Lumumba, Patrice M Macao (1999) Macapagal-Arroyo, Gloria Makarios III Malaysia, Federation of Malcolm X Mandela, Nelson Manley, Michael Marcos, Ferdinand and Imelda Marshall, Thurgood Marshall Plan McCarthyism Meir, Golda Menchú, Rigoberta Mexico, agrarian reform in Mobutu Sese Seko Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott Montoneros (Argentine urban guerrillas, 1970s) Morocco Mossadeq, Mohammad Mountbatten, Louis, Lord
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List of Articles
Mugabe, Robert Musharraf, Pervez music N Namibia Nasser, Gamal Abdel Ne Win Nehru, Jawaharlal Nepal civil war Ngo Dinh Diem Nguyen Van Thieu Nicaraguan revolution (1979–1990) Nigeria Nixon, Richard Nkrumah, Kwame Noriega, Manuel North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Numeiri, Jaafar Nunavut Territory, Canada Nyerere, Julius O Olympics (1950–present) Organization of American States (OAS) Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) P Pakistan People’s Party Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Park Chung Hee Pathet Lao Paz Estenssoro, Victor Peace Corps, U.S. Perón, Juan Domingo Philippine revolution (1986) Pinochet Ugarte, Augusto Poland (1991–present) Pol Pot Portugal (1930–present) Prague Spring presidential impeachment, U.S. Putin, Vladimir Q Qaddafi, Muammar al-Qaeda Quebec sovereignty movement Qutb, Sayyid
R Rabin, Yitzhak Rahman, Sheikh Mujibur Reagan, Ronald Rhee, Syngman Rhodesia/Zimbabwe independence movements Roe v. Wade Rosenberg, Julius and Ethel Russian Federation Rwanda/Burundi conflict S Sahel, ecological crisis in San Francisco, treaty of Sandinista National Liberation Front Saudi Arabia School of the Americas Shanghai Communiqué Shastri, Lal Bahadur Shining Path Silva, Luiz Inácio Lula da Singapore Singh, Manmohan Sino-Soviet Treaty (1950) Solidarity movement Somalia (1950–2006) South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) Southern Baptist Convention Soviet Union, dissolution of the space exploration Spain Sri Lanka St. Lawrence Seaway student movements (1960s) suburbanization, U.S. Sudanese civil wars (1970–present) Suharto, Haji Mohammad Sukarno, Ahmed T Taiwan (Republic of China) Taliban Tamil Tigers Tashkent Agreement Tlatelolco massacre (1968) Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre Teresa of Calcutta, Mother terrorism Thatcher, Margaret Third World/Global South
Tiananmen Square massacre Tibetan Revolt (1959) Tito, Marshal Togo Torrijos, Omar Touré, Ahmed Sékou Trudeau, Pierre Turabi, Hassan ‘abd Allah alTurkey U Uganda (1950–present) Ukraine United Arab Emirates (UAE) United Arab Republic (UAR) United Nations U Nu U.S.-Japan Mutual Defense Treaty U.S. relations with China (Nixon) U.S.-Republic of Korea Mutual Defense Treaty U.S.-Taiwan Mutual Defense Treaty V Vajpayee, Atal Bihari Vatican II Council (1962–1965) Velasco Ibarra, José
List of Articles Vietnam, Democratic Republic of Vietnam, Republic of Vietnam War Vo Nguyen Giap Vorster, B.J. W Wajed, Sheikh Hasina Warsaw Pact Watergate scandal Wen Jiabao (Wen Chia-pao) Western Saharan War World Bank World Trade Center, September 11, 2001 Y Yahya Khan Yeltsin, Boris Yemen Yoshida Shigeru Yugoslavia, breakup and war in Z Zapatistas Zhou Enlai (Chou En-lai) Zia, Khaleda Zia-ul-Haq, Mohammad
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List of Contributors Marsha E. Ackermann Eastern Michigan University
Collin Boyd Eastern Michigan University
Julie Eadeh U.S. Department of Sate
Mohammed Badrul Alam Miyazaki International College
Anna Brown Independent Scholar
Brian M. Eichstadt Eastern Michigan University
Samar Attar Independent Scholar
Keith Bukovich Eastern Michigan University
Melanie A. Bailey Centenary College
Nathalie Cavasin Waseda University, Japan
John H. Barnhill Independent Scholar
Elizabeth C. Charles Independent Scholar
Katie Belliel Independent Scholar
Stephen B. Clark Independent Scholar
Melissa Benne St. Charles Community College
Christopher M. Cook University of Toronto
Timothy Paul Erdel Bethel College Theodore W. Eversole Ivybridge Community College David M. Fahey University of Miami, Ohio Chino Fernandez Independent Scholar
Brett Bennett Indiana University
Justin Corfield Geelong Grammar School
Richard M. Filipink, Jr. Western Illinois University
Sarah Boslaugh Washington University, St. Louis
Steven Dieter Royal Military College of Canada
Anke Finger Independent Scholar xv
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List of Contributors
Dan Fitzsimmons Independent Scholar
Soo Chun Lu Independent Scholar
Uta Kresse Raina Temple University
Scott Fitzsimmons University of Calgary
Eric Martone Waterbury Public Schools
Michael A. Ridge University of Iowa
John Haas College of the Canyons
John M. Meyernik Eastern Michigan University
Thomas Robertson Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Jean Shepherd Hamm East Tennessee State University Laura J. Hilton Muskingum College Alphine W. Jefferson Randolph-Macon College Nicholas Katers University of Wisconsin Emilian Kavalski University of Alberta Randa A. Kayyali George Mason University Andrew Kellett University of Maryland
Heather K. Michon Independent Scholar Patit Paban Mishra Sambalpur University Scott C. Monje Independent Scholar Diego I. Murguía Buenos Aries University Caryn E. Neumann Ohio State University Mitchell Newton-Matza University of St. Francis Mari Nukii Independent Scholar
Brian Kolodiejchuk Missionaries of Charity (India)
Viktor Pal University of Tampere
Andrej Kreutz University of Calgary
David Miller Parker California State University
Bill Kte’pi Independent Scholar
Chris Pennington University of Toronto
Norman C. Rothman University of Maryland Curtis R. Ryan Appalachian State University Hisham M. Sabki Eastern Michigan University Steve Sagarra Independent Scholar Anthony Santoro University of Heidelberg Nicholas J. Schlosser University of Maryland Lucy Scholand Independent Scholar Michael J. Schroeder Eastern Michigan University James E. Seelye, Jr. University of Toledo Caleb Simmons Eastern Michigan University
Kathleen Legg Colorado State University
Julia Pitman Colorado State University
Olena V. Smyntyna Mechnikov National University, Ukraine
Jenna Levin Independent Scholar
R. G. Pradhan Sambalpur University
Robert N. Stacy Independent Scholar
Thomas A. Lewis Independent Scholar
Luca Prono Independent Scholar
Janice J. Terry Eastern Michigan University
Karl Loewenstein University of Wisconsin
Babak Rahimi University of California
Ashley Thirkill-Mackelprang University of Washington
List of Contributors
Ryan Touhey University of Waterloo
Rian M. Wall University of Calgary
Taymiya R. Zaman University of Michigan
Dallace W. Unger, Jr. Colorado State University
John Walsh Shinawatra University
Ramzi Abou Zeineddine George Mason University
Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur Eastern Michigan University
R. Dennis Walters Independent Scholar
Verónica. M. Ziliotto Buenos Aires University
Sathyaraj Venkatesan Independent Scholar
Mark F. Whitters Eastern Michigan University
Magdalena Zolkos Independent Scholar
Matthew H. Wahlert Miami University, Ohio
Jake Yap Loyola School of Theology (Manila)
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Chronology 1950 USSR and China Sign Pact China signs a 30-year Treaty of Friendship with the Soviet Union.
1952 King George VI Dies King George VI of Great Britain dies on February 6. Elizabeth is crowned queen.
1950 North Korea Invades the South The Korean War begins with an attack on June 24 made by North Korean forces across the 38th parallel dividing North and South Korea.
1952 Mau Mau Begin Terrorist and Nationalist Actions A state of emergency is declared by the British governor of Kenya as the Mau Mau begin an open uprising against British rule.
1950 Truman Announces National Emergency To respond to the strain on economic and military resources caused by the Korean War, U.S. President Truman announces a National Emergency.
1952 King Farouk Abdicates Young army officers, disgusted by widespread corruption in Egypt, stage a revolt against King Farouk. The revolt is led by General Mohammed Naguib and Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser.
1951 King Abdullah Is Assassinated King Abdullah of Jordan (formerly Transjordan) is assassinated while praying at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. 1951 H-Bomb On May 12, the United States detonates a hydrogen bomb on a Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific. 1951 First Electronic Computer The Remington Rand Corporation unveils the first commercial digital computer, called the UNIVAC.
1952 Revolt in Bolivia A revolt takes place in Bolivia when the Movimento Nacional Revolucionario is deprived of the election of its leader as president. 1952 Polio Vaccine Is Invented A vaccine against the disease polio is developed by Jonas Salk. 1952–57 First Five-Year Plan in People’s Republic of China follows the Soviet model. xix
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Chronology
1953 Korean Armistice On July 27, the signing of an armistice between the United Nations and North Korea ends the fighting of the Korean War.
1955 Military Coup in Argentina President Juan Perón of Argentina is ousted by the military. Following the death of his wife, Eva, he loses much of his support.
1953 Stalin Dies Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, dies at the age of 73. Stalin is succeeded by Georgy Malenkov and, later, Nikita Khrushchev.
1956 Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) Launches 100 Flowers Campaign Intellectuals in China are punished for criticizing the Chinese Communist Party
1954 U.S.–South Korea Mutual Defense Treaty The United States signs a military accord with South Korea.
1956 Soviet Troops March into Hungary Rioting against the Soviets erupts throughout Hungary. Soviet troops are called in to put down the revolt.
1954 Dien Bien Phu On May 7, Dien Bien Phu falls to Communist Vietminh forces, and with it so do French hopes of victory in Vietnam.
1956 Tunisia and Morocco Become Independent Large-scale opposition to French rule forces the French to grant independence to Morocco.
1954 Geneva Accords The Geneva Accords end the French war in Indochina. Under the terms, the country is divided into a communist north and noncommunist south. Laos and Cambodia also become independent.
1956 Sudan Becomes Independent Sudan had been under joint Egyptian-British rule. The Sudanese vote for independence, and on January 1, the country’s independence is declared.
1954 SEATO Is Formed In an additional collective security alliance, modeled on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, eight nations form the South East Asia Treaty Organization.
1956 Suez War After sustained terrorist attacks launched from Egyptian territory, Israel, in coordination with Britain and France, attack and capture the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt. At the same time, Britain and France seize the Suez Canal, which has been nationalized by Egypt.
1954 Republic of China–U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty The United States provides the Republic of China protection against the People’s Republic of China.
1957 Common Market Is Formed An economic union is formed by six European countries.
1954 Revolt in Algeria The National Liberation Front (FLN) begins a revolt against French rule.
1957 Britain Grants Independence to Malaysia Malaysia is granted independence from British colonial rule and becomes a centralized federation with a constitutional monarchy.
1954 Segregation Is Ruled Illegal The U.S. Supreme Court, in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, rules that segregation is unconstitutional. 1954 U.S. Backs Coup in Guatemala The Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman is overthrown by military forces led by Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas. Armas receives direct support from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. 1955 Bandung Conference of Nonaligned Nations A conference is held in Bandung, Indonesia, under People’s Republic of China and India’s leadership.
1957 Sputnik Is Launched On October 4 the Soviet Union launches the first artificial satellite into space. 1957–75 Second Indochina War A war of national liberation in the wake of World War II is fought by nationalist Vietnamese against French, American, and Chinese forces. 1957 Military Dictatorship Ends in Venezuela A nine-year military dictatorship in Venezuela is ousted in 1957. Large-scale rioting leads to its fall.
1958 Imre Nagy Is Executed in Hungary The Hungarian Communist regime executes Imre Nagy, the leader of the Hungarian revolution of 1956. 1958 Egypt and Syria Join United Arab Republic Gamal Abdel Nasser successfully negotiates the merger of Egypt and Syria into the United Arab Republic. 1958 U.S. Troops Land in Lebanon President Dwight Eisenhower orders 5,000 U.S. Marines to Lebanon to help maintain order after the ouster of the pro-Western Lebanese government, and the revolution in Iraq brings down a pro-British regime. 1958–60 Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) launches an economic and social plan with the goal of transforming mainland China into a modern communist society. 1959 Singapore Gains Independence Singapore becomes an independent state in the British Commonwealth on June 3. 1959 Uprising in Tibet Fighting breaks out between Communist Chinese troops and the population in Lhasa, who are rebelling against Communist rule. Dalai Lama flees to India. 1959 Castro Seizes Power in Cuba On January 1, Fidel Castro marches into Havana after Cuban dictator Batista flees. 1960 Syngman Rhee Is Ousted President of South Korea Syngman Rhee is ousted by student protests. 1960 Sino-Soviet Split An ideological split develops between Communist China and the Soviet Union. Armed border conflict occurs between the two nations. 1960 African Independence Niger, Mauritania, Mali, French Congo, Chad, and Madagascar all become independent.
Chronology
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is created, with Joseph Kasavubu as president and Patrice Lumumba as premier. A civil war subsequently breaks out when Moise Tshombe declares Kantaga Province independent. 1961 Kennedy Is Inaugurated President John Kennedy gives a brief but stirring inaugural speech that signifies the birth of a new era. 1962 Agreement Establishes Malaysia Federation An agreement is reached on the establishment of a Malaysian federation comprising Malaysia, Singapore, Sarawak, Brunei, and British Borneo. 1962 Border War Between China and India Battles break out between the two countries over disputed territory. 1962 Burundi Independence Burundi was a part of Belgian Mandated Territory. It petitions the United Nations for full independence, which is granted in 1962. 1962 Algeria Is Granted Independence On July 1 Algerians vote overwhelmingly for independence from France. On July 3 Algeria officially declares its independence. 1962 Environmental Movement Is Launched Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring is published in September. By describing the effects of the use of pesticides and other chemicals on the environment, Carson helps launch the environmental movement. 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis The Soviets secretly place medium-range missiles in Cuba. When the U.S. government finds out, it blockades Cuba. The Soviets pull out the missiles, ending the crisis. 1963 Kenya Declares Independence On December 12, Great Britain grants Kenya independence within the Commonwealth.
1960 Nigerian Independence On October 1, Nigeria becomes independent.
1963 OAU Is Founded Representatives of 30 of the 32 independent nations of Africa meet in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to form the Organization of African Unity (OAU).
1960 Belgian Congo Independence On June 30, an independent Republic of the Congo
1963 Nuclear Test Ban Agreement The first test ban agreement between the United States
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Chronology
and the Soviet Union is ratified by the Senate on October 10. The agreement bans the above-ground testing of nuclear weapons.
1965 Rhodesia Declares Independence Rhodesia declares its independence from Great Britain, in defiance of the British government.
1963 March on Washington, D.C. Two hundred thousand people participate in the largest nonviolent demonstration ever held to support the passage of civil rights legislation.
1966 Botswana Gains Independence On September 30 Botswana, formerly called the Bechuanaland Protectorate, becomes independent.
1963 President Kennedy Is Assassinated On November 22 while visiting Dallas, Texas, President Kennedy is shot and killed by Lee Harvey Oswald. 1964 China Explodes A-Bomb On October 16 the Chinese explode their first atomic weapon. 1964 Nikita Khrushchev Is Ousted Nikita Khrushchev is ousted as leader of the Soviet Union and is succeeded by Leonid Brezhnev. 1964 Tonkin Gulf Resolution The U.S. Congress passes the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which gives the president the authorization to “take all necessary steps and measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.” It leads to increased U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War. 1964 Civil Rights Act of 1964 After a long fight the civil rights legislation of 1964 is passed. It gives the U.S. federal government broad powers to fight racial discrimination. 1965 War Escalates in Vietnam In March the United States initiates the first sustained attacks against North Vietnam, in an action named Rolling Thunder. 1965 Indo-Pakistani War The war is the second skirmish between India and Pakistan over control of Kashmir. 1965 Gambia Gains Independence On February 18 Gambia becomes an independent country. 1965 Singapore Becomes Independent Singapore secedes from Malaysia and gains independence.
1966 Lesotho Gains Independence On October 4, the British colony of Basutoland becomes independent, and is renamed Lesotho. 1966 Sukarno Resigns Sukarno resigns as president of Indonesia, after a failed coup. He is succeeded by General Suharto. 1966 Nigerian Civil War In January a series of insurrections in the Nigerian army brings chaos to the country. 1966 Great Proletarian Revolution Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) launches another effort to reform Chinese society. 1966 National Organization of Women Is Founded The National Organization of Women is founded in the United States by Betty Friedan, who becomes its first president. 1967 ASEAN Is Formed The Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) is formed by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand to aid economic growth, progress, and cultural development, and to promote peace in Southeast Asia. 1967 Military Coup in Greece The Greek military stages a coup against the civilian government. All moderate and leftist politicians are arrested. When King Constantine refuses to support the military, he is sent into exile. 1967 Six-Day War After being threatened with attack, Israel attacks its Arab neighbors. In six days it gains victory over Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. 1967 Antiwar Protests Amid growing opposition to the war in Vietnam, large-scale antiwar protests are held in New York, San Francisco, and other U.S. cities.
1967 Che Guevera Is Killed in Bolivia Ernesto “Che” Guevera is killed by Bolivian troops hunting down Bolivian rebels. 1968 Rioting in France French students take to the streets, bringing Paris to a virtual standstill. Fighting breaks out between the students and the police. 1968 “Prague Spring” in Czechoslovakia Alexander Dubcˇek becomes first secretary of the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia; his reforms are crushed by Soviet-led Warsaw Pact troops.
Chronology
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1970 Four Are Killed at Kent State American campuses erupt in protest against the Vietnam War. At Kent State University, in Ohio, National Guardsmen kill four unarmed protesters. 1970 Salvador Allende Becomes President of Chile Salvador Allende Gossens is elected president of Chile. He is the first Marxist ever elected in free elections. 1971 Communist China Joins UN, Replacing Taiwan On October 25 the United Nations approves the membership of Communist China, replacing Taiwan.
1968 Martin Luther King, Jr., Is Assassinated On April 4, a lone assassin kills Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., America’s leading civil rights activist.
1971 Idi Amin Seizes Power in Uganda In January, while Ugandan President Milton Obote is out of the country, Colonel Idi Amin stages a coup to oust the president.
1968 Robert Kennedy Is Assassinated Robert Kennedy, brother of the late President John F. Kennedy, is killed on June 5, after winning the Democratic primary for the presidency in California.
1972 Arab Terrorists Attack Israeli Olympic Team Palestinian terrorists, who are members of the Black September Organization, attack the Israeli team at the 1972 Summer Olympics.
1969 Non-Proliferation Agreement Is Signed The United States and the Soviet Union sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which pledges the two nations would not divulge secret information that would allow additional countries to build nuclear weapons.
1972 Nixon Visits China On February 21, 1972, President Richard Nixon arrives in Beijing for a seven-day stay. Although no major agreements are reached during the summit, its occurrence ushers in a new era of diplomacy for the United States.
1969 Clashes on Soviet-Chinese Border In March the ideological rift between the Soviet Union and Communist China deteriorates into fighting along the border. Thirty Soviet soldiers are killed in one clash on a small, uninhabited island in the Ussuri River.
1973 U.S. Completes Withdrawal from Vietnam On January 27 the United States and North Vietnam sign the Paris peace accords. Under the terms of the accords, U.S. troops withdraw from Vietnam.
1969 War Between Honduras and El Salvador Rioting after a lost soccer match leads to a brief war between Honduras and El Salvador. 1969 Apollo 11 Apollo 11, with Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin Aldrin, Jr., lifts off for the Moon on July 16. Four days later Neil Armstrong sets foot on the Moon. 1970 War in Vietnam Spreads to Cambodia On April 30 President Richard Nixon announces that U.S. troops would join with South Vietnamese troops to invade the border area of Cambodia and eliminate Communist sanctuaries.
1973 Severe Drought A seven-year drought in sub-Saharan Africa brings starvation to over 100,000 people in the countries of Chad, Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Senegal, and Burkina Faso. 1973 Fourth Arab-Israeli War On October 6, the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, the Egyptians and the Syrians launch a surprise attack against Israel to retake territory occupied since 1967. 1973 Allende Is Killed in Coup A military coup, purportedly supported by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, deposes President Allende of Chile and replaces him with Augusto Pinochet Ugarte.
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Chronology
1974 Military Government of Greece Resigns The military junta in Greece resigns, turning control of the government over to Constantine Karamanlis. Martial law is lifted, and elections are held. 1974 Military Coup in Portugal A leftist military coup takes place in Portugal. It unseats the right-wing dictatorship in power for 40 years. 1974 India Explodes Nuclear Device On May 18 the Indians detonate a nuclear bomb in an underground explosion. 1974 Emperor Haile Selassie Is Deposed in Ethiopia The 44-year reign of Haile Selassie comes to an end when he is deposed by the army. 1974 President Nixon Resigns On August 8, 1974, Richard Nixon becomes the first president in U.S. history to resign. Nixon resigns as the House of Representatives is poised to vote on the articles of impeachment against him. He is succeeded by Gerald Ford. 1974 Soyuz-Apollo Mission The meeting of the American Apollo and the Soviet Soyuz on July 19, 1975, marks the first cooperative space mission between the United States and the Soviet Union. 1975 Helsinki Accords Thirty-five nations sign the Helsinki Accords. The accords recognize the borders of Europe as they had been at the end of the World War II, thus recognizing Soviet domination of the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania). 1975 Franco Dies On November 20 Francisco Franco dies. His death ends a dictatorship that had lasted since the Spanish civil war. 1975 Pol Pot in Cambodia On April 17, Communist forces capture Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. The new Communist regime is headed by Pol Pot, who commits genocide in Cambodia. 1975 Communists Defeat South Vietnam On April 30 North Vietnamese Communist forces capture Saigon, ending the Vietnam War.
1975 Mozambique Gains Independence Portugal grants independence to Mozambique on June 25. 1975 Angola Independent Angola declares its independence from Portugal. Two separate governments are proclaimed. 1975 King Faisal Is Assassinated King Faisal ibn Abd-al-Aziz of Saudi Arabia is assassinated by a family member. 1976 Mao Zedong Dies Chairman Mao dies, the Cultural Revolution ends, and the Gang of Four is ousted. 1977 First Elections Are Held in Pakistan The first general elections held under civilian rule take place on March 7. 1978 Chiang Ching-kuo Is Elected President Chiang Ching-kuo is elected president of the Republic of China, beginning democratization. 1978 Sandinista Guerrillas Seize Hostages Sandinista guerrillas capture the National Palace in Managua, Nicaragua. They seize 1,500 hostages, including members of the legislature. 1978 Deng Xiaoping in Power Deng Xiaoping comes to power in China and begins economic reforms. 1978 John Paul II Is Elected Pope. John Paul II is the first Pole to be elected pope. 1979 SALT II The SALT II Accord is reached in June, allowing both the United States and the Soviet Union to build up to 2,250 missiles, of which 1,320 could be MIRVD (Multiple Independent Re-entry Vehicles). 1979 U.S. and China Establish Relations In January 1979 the United States and Communist China establish formal diplomatic relations. 1979 Vietnamese-China War In January 1979 Vietnamese troops capture Phnom Penh in an attempt to overthrow the government of Pol Pot. In response, the Chinese invade North Vietnam.
1979 Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Is Hanged A military coup led by General Zia unseats President Bhutto in Pakistan. Bhutto is charged with corruption and sentenced to death. 1979 Soviets Invades Afghanistan Soviet troops pour into Afghanistan to support Hafizullah Amin, who has recently unseated Mohammed Taraki. The Soviets quickly send 40,000 troops but are unable to put down the rebellion launched by Taraki loyalists. 1979 Idi Amin Is Overthrown The despotic rule of Idi Amin comes to an end when a joint force of Ugandan rebels and Tanzanian troops enters the Ugandan capital of Kampala. Amin flees to Saudi Arabia. 1979 War Between Somalia and Ethiopia On August 8 Somalia invades Ethiopia, the latest chapter in the ongoing dispute over the Ogaden. 1979 Southern Rhodesia Becomes Zimbabwe The white-controlled government, under Ian Smith, successfully holds against majority rule until 1976. Robert Mugabe becomes president of Zimbabwe. 1979 Shah of Iran Is Ousted On January 16, the shah leaves Iran for exile. One week later, the Ayatollah Khomeini returns from exile and forms an Islamic revolutionary government. 1979 Peace Treaty between Egypt and Israel On March 26, in Washington, D.C., a peace agreement is signed between Egypt and Israel, brokered by U.S. President Jimmy Carter. 1979 Militants Seize U.S. Embassy Angered by the arrival of the shah in the United States for medical treatment, militants attack and seize the American embassy in Tehran. Forty-nine embassy employees are held hostage for 444 days. 1979 Sandinistas Revolution Triumphant A multi-class insurrection against the Somoza dictatorship results in the coming to power of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, initiating the 11-year Sandinista revolution (1979–90). 1979 Civil War in El Salvador Civil war breaks out in El Salvador. A military coup
Chronology
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unseats the incumbent President Carlos Humberto Romero. 1980 Strikes Across Poland Polish workers, led by Lech Wałe¸sa, strike the Gdan´sk shipyards. The workers win a major victory when the government agrees to demands made by the newly formed Solidarity Trade Union to legalize unions as well as affirm the right to strike. 1980 Gang of Four on Trial The Gang of Four, consisting of Jiang Qing (Mao’s fourth wife) and other important leaders in the Cultural Revolution, go on trial in China. The Gang of Four fell from power after Mao Zedong’s death in 1976. 1980 Libyan Troops Intervene in Chad Civil War Civil war breaks out in Chad between the forces of President Goukouni Oueddei and Prime Minister Hissène Habré. 1980 Iraq-Iran War Iraq invades Iran. The war lasts until 1988, and it is estimated that almost one million people die. 1980 Leftists Seize Embassy in Colombia Members of the Colombian April 19th movement take over the Dominican Republic’s embassy during a reception. 1981 Mitterrand Is Elected French President François Mitterrand is elected as the first French socialist president in a surprise win over incumbent Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. 1981 Martial Law in Poland Martial law is imposed in Poland by Polish leader General Wojciech Jaruzelski in an attempt to repress the Solidarity movement. 1981 Anwar Sadat Is Assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat is assassinated by Muslim extremists who oppose his peace agreement with Israel and the increasingly repressive regime in Egypt. 1981 Reagan Arms Buildup President Ronald Reagan proposes a $180 billion expansion of the American military over the next six years.
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Chronology
1981 Assassination Attempt On March 30 President Reagan is shot and gravely wounded by a lone gunman, John Hinckley, Jr. 1982 Israel invades Lebanon Israel invades Lebanon on June 6, advancing to Beirut, and continues to hold South Lebanon until 2000. 1982 War in the Falklands On April 2 the Argentinean military seizes the Falkland Islands off the coast of Argentina. On May 21, the first British troops land on the Falklands and rapidly defeat the Argentinean forces. 1983 Northern Chad Is Seized Libya continues its involvement in Chad. The government requests and receives aid from both the U.S and French governments. 1983 U.S. Invasion of Grenada Under the guise of an invitation by the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, U.S. troops intervene and take control of the island. 1984 Indira Gandhi Is Assassinated Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is killed by two of her Sikh bodyguards in revenge for her armed raid on their temple. She is succeeded by her son Rajiv Gandhi. 1984 United Kingdom and China Agree on Hong Kong Great Britain and the People’s Republic of China agree on terms for the return of Hong Kong to China when the 99-year lease of portions of Hong Kong expires in 1997. 1984 Poison Gas Tragedy in India Gas escapes from the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India. The gas, which is methyl isocyanate (used in the manufacture of insecticides), kills 2,000 people; 200,000 suffer long-term harm. 1984 Moderates Win Election in El Salvador Free elections held in El Salvador bring José Napoleon Duarte to power as president. Duarte is considered a moderate. 1984 AIDS Epidemic Begins French research scientists report isolating the HIV virus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).
1985 Gorbachev Becomes Soviet Leader Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is named the new leader of the Soviet Union. He begins reforms and brings in Boris Yeltsin, who later replaces him. 1985 Nimeiri Is Ousted in the Sudan General Nimeiri is ousted in the Sudan after serving as the head of government since 1969. 1985 TWA Flight 847 Is Hijacked A TWA Boeing 727 is hijacked by two Shi’i terrorists; 153 people are held hostage. After Israel releases 31 of its Shi’i prisoners, the hostages are released. 1985 United States Becomes Debtor Nation For the first time since 1914, the United States owes more money to foreigners than it is owed. 1986 Nuclear Disaster at Chernobyl A Soviet nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine not far from Kiev explodes, releasing fatal radiation to the surrounding areas. 1986 Summit at Reykjavík A two-day summit is held in Reykjavík, Iceland, between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. At the summit, the Soviets make major concessions in negotiations on strategic arms. 1986 Marcos Is Deposed Filipino leader Ferdinand Marcos has parliament declare him the winner in a fraudulent election, even though his opponent has actually won. Mass demonstrations ensue, and Marcos is forced to flee when the army refuses to put down the demonstrations. He is succeeded by the true winner of the election, Corazon Aquino. 1986 Iran Contra The Reagan administration confirms that it has been selling arms to Iran, which is fighting a war with Iraq, in an effort to obtain the release of American hostages in Lebanon. 1987 Reagan and Gorbachev Meet The signing of the INF (Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces) treaty in 1987 marks the beginning of the end of the cold war. 1987 Libyan Troops Are Driven Out of Chad Chad takes the offensive in its civil war. The army of
Chronology xxvii Chad attacks Libyan forces in the northern village of Aozou and routs them.
tions demanding democratization of China. They are bloodily put down by the Chinese Communist Party.
1987 Intifada Begins When an Israeli truck in the Gaza Strip hits and kills four people, Palestinians respond with protests.
1989 U.S Troops Invade Panama When Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega clamps down on the limited democracy existing in Panama, the United States intervenes and ousts the Noriega-led government.
1988 Gorbachev Announces Unilateral Troop Cuts Soviet Premier Gorbachev announces at the UN that the Soviet Union is unilaterally cutting back its conventional forces in eastern Europe by 500,000 troops. 1988 Benazir Bhutto Is Elected Benazir Bhutto is elected prime minister of Pakistan, the first woman in a Muslim country to hold the position.
1989 Chileans Vote to End Military Rule Elections held in December bring Patricio Aylwin to power as president of Chile. 1990 Lithuania Independent On March 11 the Lithuanian Parliament declares its independence from the Soviet Union.
1988 Soviets Out of Afghanistan The Soviets agree to remove troops from Afghanistan.
1990 Germany Is Reunited On October 3 East and West Germany reunite, ending the division created at the end of World War II.
1988 Ten-Day Siege of Golden Temple Thirty-six are killed during the siege of the Sikh Golden Temple by the Indian army.
1990 Free Elections in Poland Lech Wałe¸sa is elected president of Poland. He receives 74 percent of the vote.
1988 Free Elections Held in Soviet Union Free elections are held in the Soviet Union for the first time in its history. Boris Yeltsin is elected president of the Russian Federation.
1990 Elections in Myanmar In the first free elections in 30 years, the voters of Myanmar (formerly Burma) repudiate the military government, which is ignored.
1989 Solidarity Wins Election in Poland On June 5 the Solidarity movement wins by an overwhelming majority in the first free election in Poland.
1990 Nelson Mandela Is Freed Nelson Mandela, leader of the African National Congress, is released after 27 years in prison by President F. W. de Klerk as the first step in the creation of a multiracial democracy.
1989 Berlin Wall Comes Down On October 18, the regime of Erich Hoenecker, the Communist leader of East Germany, falls. It succumbs to increasing riots, as well as a flood of East Germans leaving via the open borders of Hungary. 1989 Czechoslovakia Elections The Communist regime of Czechoslovakia yields to popular demands and allowed free elections. 1989 Ceaus¸escu Ousted in Romania In the only bloody revolt in eastern Europe, Communist Romanian strongman Nicolae Ceaus¸escu is deposed. 1989 Tiananmen Square In April students in Beijing begin a series of demonstra-
1990 Namibia Independent After being occupied by South Africa for nearly 70 years, Namibia becomes independent. 1990 Gulf War Begins On August 2 Iraq attacks Kuwait. In response the United States leads an international coalition that frees Kuwait. 1991 Airlift of Ethiopian Jews to Israel In a period of 36 hours, Israel airlifts 14,500 Jews from Ethiopia to Israel. 1991 Failed Kremlin Coup On August 21, hard-line Communists stage a coup
xxviii Chronology against the government of Mikhail Gorbachev. It fails when Boris Yeltsin, the leader of the Russian Federation, rallies popular support against it.
1994 Mandela Is Elected President of South Africa Nelson Mandela is elected the first black leader of South Africa in its first free multiracial election.
1991 Rajiv Gandhi Is Assassinated Rajiv Gandhi, prime minister of India and son of Indira Gandhi, is killed by an ethnic Tamil from Sri Lanka.
1994 Civil War in Chechnya A civil war breaks out in the Russian province of Chechnya after Chechens demand independence.
1991 Cambodian Civil War Ends Under pressure from the world’s powers, the Vietnamese-controlled Cambodian government and rebel forces reach a peace agreement.
1995 Israeli Prime Minister Is Assassinated Yitzhak Rabin, Israel’s prime minister, is assassinated on November 3 by a right-wing Israeli opponent of the peace process.
1991 Eritrea Independent After a 30-year armed struggle against Ethiopian domination, Eritrean forces defeat the Ethiopian military and gain independence.
1996 Elections in Bosnia The Dayton Accords are signed, ending armed hostilities between hostile religious groups and mandating elections in Bosnia.
1991 End of the Soviet Union On December 21 representatives of 11 former Soviet Republics meet in Alma Ata and sign Declaration of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
1996 Taliban Gains Control of Afghanistan The Taliban, a Muslim fundamentalist group, captures Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan.
1992 Civil War Begins in Former Yugoslavia Civil war breaks out in Yugoslavia after the fall of the Communist regime. Among its former components are Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Croatia, and Slovenia. 1992 End of Military Rule in South Korea Kim Young Sam becomes the first nonmilitary candidate to be elected president of South Korea. 1992 Security Council Votes Sanctions on Libya The UN Security Council votes to impose sanctions on Libya for refusing to surrender two suspects in the bombing of a Pan Am flight over Scotland. 1992 El Salvador Signs Peace Agreement The guerrilla movement and the El Salvador government sign an agreement, ending a 13-year civil war. 1993 Terrorists Attack World Trade Center In February a powerful bomb explodes in the World Trade Center in New York, killing seven and injuring 1,000. The bombers are Islamists. 1993 Israel and PLO Reach Accord Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization reach an accord on an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho.
1996 Suicide Bombers Hit Israel A series of suicide bombings strike both Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, seriously affecting the peace process. 1997 Britain Returns Hong Kong to China British rule over Hong Kong comes to an end on July 1, with the region returning to China. China agrees to maintain extensive autonomy for Hong Kong. 1998 Northern Ireland Peace Representatives of Catholics and Protestants of Ireland, together with representatives of the Irish Republic and the United Kingdom, sign a major peace accord. 1998 U.S. Embassies Are Bombed Simultaneously On August 7 bombs explode at U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. 1999 Free Parliamentary Elections in Indonesia On June 7 Indonesia holds free parliamentary elections. The opposition leader, Megawati Sukarnoputri, wins the most support. 1999 President Clinton Is Impeached U.S. President Bill Clinton is impeached by the House of Representatives but is acquitted by the Senate. 2000 Camp David Summit Fails Chances for peace between Palestinians and Israel
Chronology are dashed when a summit hosted by President Clinton fails. Palestinians begin another uprising against Israeli occupation.
2000 Bush Becomes U.S. President Republican George W. Bush wins a contested election against Democrat Al Gore. The U.S. Supreme Court decides in favor of Bush. 2001 9/11 Terrorist Attack Terrorists crash two planes into the World Trade Center in New York and a third into the Pentagon. 2001 U.S. Forces to Afghanistan A U.S.-led coalition invades Afghanistan, fighting against and ousting the Taliban government for giving sanctuary to Osama bin Laden, leader of the 9/11 terrorism group al-Qaeda. 2003 U.S. Invades Iraq U.S. troops invade Iraq and overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein. Conflicts continue.
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2004 Madrid Terror Attacks On March 11 a series of coordinated terrorist attacks take place, aimed at the Madrid commuter train system. The attacks kill a total of 192 people and wound 2,050. 2004 Genocide Begins in Darfur After a rebellion breaks out in western Sudan the government instigates militias and turns on the local population. 2005 Hurricane Katrina Hurricane Katrina strikes New Orleans. One million people are forced to flee and more than 1,800 are killed. 2006 North Korea Explodes A-Bomb North Korea becomes a member of the nuclear club when it reportedly tests an atomic bomb. 2007 Iraq War Continues U.S. forces continue fighting in Iraq, a war now lasting longer than World War II.
Major Themes
1950 to the Present Food Production Between 1950 and 2000 the world population increased from about 2.5 billion to over 6 billion people. Throughout this era food shortages and malnutrition persisted in parts of eastern and southern Asia, Central and South America, and throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Famines were caused by human factors such as war, civil strife, and failed economic and political policies, while sometimes being exacerbated by natural disasters such as drought. In the 1970s an almost decade-long drought in the Sahel region of Africa south of the Sahara contributed to the death of millions. Hundreds of thousands of others left their homes, walking long distances to neighboring countries in search of food. These refugees then became dependent on subsistence aid from governments or relief agencies. In the early 21st century, a peanut-based paste (Plumpy’nut), developed by a French scientist, André Briend, offered high nutritional value at very low cost and seemed a promising means of alleviating severe malnutrition among children in Africa. A human-made famine caused by the communist regime under Mao Zedong resulted in the deaths of 27 million people in China from 1958 to 1960. The reversal of Mao’s agricultural policies in the 1980s under Deng Xiaoping increased agricultural production by 50 percent in only eight years. Inefficiencies and waste on collective farms also resulted in food shortages in the Soviet Union. In the Middle East, some oil-rich nations such as Libya and Saudi Arabia devoted huge amounts of money to subsidize agricultural and livestock production in order to avoid total dependence on food imports. Vast agricultural projects, some using hydroponics (growth in water), irrigation, and other techniques increased production but were not cost-effective. Nations in the region with large populations and little oil, such as Egypt, were unable to adopt such expensive technologies to increase productivity. Subsistence production in Central and South America declined as commercial agriculture grew; rural producers everywhere became increasingly linked to national and international markets. Overall, imports of food increased as the 20th century progressed. United States foreign aid was often tied to the acceptance of U.S. food imports that sought to dump excess production xxxi
xxxii 1950 to the Present overseas. Most poor countries remained dependent on the export of low-priced single crops, such as coffee from Brazil, bananas and other fruits from Central America, and cocoa and peanuts from West Africa. By the 21st century, privatization and globalization had further lowered the prices of agricultural products from nations in the Global South, leading to greater rural poverty. The United States and others also sought to export wheat; hence, in Mexico and other South American nations wheat bread gradually began to undermine the popularity of the traditional corn tortillas that provided more complete nutrients. Similarly, mothers in much of the Global South were encouraged to buy manufactured milk formulas rather than nursing their infants. The degradation of the environment also made it harder for the rural poor to eke out livelihoods on depleted and deforested soils with insufficient water supplies. In contrast, heavy government subsidies and protectionist policies protected farmers and the agricultural sector in Europe, North America, and Australasia. Technological and political developments led to the increase of food production and distribution in many regions. Improved transportation and communication systems allowed food from rich agricultural nations, especially the United States, Canada, and Australia, to be distributed in poor regions. International humanitarian aid organizations and aid benefits by rock stars and others helped to provide needed relief. Scientific and technological advances and chemical fertilizers also increased the yields of vital grains per acre. However, the application of these developments was uneven. Poor countries used the least amount of fertilizers; ranging from 200 grams per hectare of arable land in the Central African Republic to 535,800 grams per hectare in South Korea. Pesticide use was similarly uneven. The “green revolution” begun in the 1960s introduced high-yielding rice, corn, and wheat; as a result of the use of these high-yield crops, the world’s rice production doubled between 1967 and 1992, and India went from being a grain-importing nation to an exporter of rice. Harvests in Mexico and other nations also increased. Thus, formerly famine-prone nations such as India, Bangladesh, China, and Mexico were able to produce sufficient food to feed their growing populations, although pockets of hunger and malnutrition remained. By the 1990s scientists had also successfully genetically modified (GM) key crops and livestock to increase production. Vast irrigation projects such as the Aswa¯n Dam in Egypt, the Three Gorges Dam in China, and the Atatürk Dam in Turkey also brought new land into agricultural production, as well as generating electrical power for civilian use and industry. Unfortunately, these projects came at high ecological and human costs. Some argued that smaller, more technologically appropriate projects might have produced the same results at lower human and economic costs. The development of new and less perishable foodstuffs was sometimes driven by wars or the military. For example, during World War II, instant eggs and Spam were adopted as rations to feed troops. After the war, many in the West adopted these products as part of their usual diets. The space program also contributed to the development of high-energy drinks and dehydrated foods. A wide variety of easily available and inexpensive frozen foods provided convenience to Western homemakers who eagerly fed TV dinners and other “fast foods” to their families. These new foodstuffs altered the eating habits of many in the West and freed homemakers, mostly women, from long hours spent in food preparation. Fast-food franchises proliferated from the West to Russia, the Middle East, India, and China. The wealthy around the world adopted Western eating styles and foodstuffs, including soft drinks, hamburgers, and pizza. Conversely, Asian cuisine from India, Thailand, and China became popular in the United States and Europe. Other new foodstuffs, including a wide variety of soft drinks, were popular worldwide. Health concerns, especially among the middle and upper classes in the West, contributed to the popularity of organic foods and eating locally grown products that were close to nature. Many also adopted the Mediterranean diet heavy with fruits and vegetables with little meat. The poor in the West and the rest of the world were generally unable to afford these more expensive foodstuffs or diets. Hence although much of the world’s population was better fed by the beginning of the 21st century, people in Europe, North America, Japan, and Australasia consumed about one-third more
1950 to the Present xxxiii calories per day than people in poor nations. The discrepancy in consumption of protein, particularly meat, was even greater. Whereas obesity was an increasing problem among the wealthy, malnutrition and hunger continued to threaten the health and longevity of the poor. Science and Technology The pace of scientific and technological discovery surged in the second half of the 20th century and showed no sign of ebbing in the 21st. Although most discoveries further enriched the world’s wealthiest nations, as had been true since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, other countries, including China, India, South Korea, Taiwan, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and South Africa, began to pose an energetic challenge to the West and Japan. For the United States and Soviet Union, the cold war was for many years the engine that drove innovation. Both nations’ huge spending on military projects often also yielded important scientific information and an array of new consumer products. Among innovations that began in the defense sector were jet aircraft, lasers and global positioning devices, electronic computers, and the Internet. “Big Science” and “Big Technology,” carried out in government agencies, major universities, and huge corporate laboratories, created what U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower criticized in a 1961 speech as the “military-industrial complex.” Eisenhower was not the only American, or human, to fear a world led by the “scientific-technological elite.” During this period, the legitimacy of science and invention would be undercut by growing environmental degradation, chemical and atomic disasters, the emergence of dangerous new diseases, and troubling ethical questions. The Space Frontier. Both Britain and Germany flew jet-propelled airplanes into battle during World War II, but commercial use of these much faster planes grew slowly in the postwar years. By 1955, the Soviets had jets in service; an early passenger was Premier Nikita Khrushchev. The U.S. airline industry, profitably flying propeller planes, took longer to introduce jet engines. But by 1959, Pan American World Airways was flying Boeing 707 jets from New York to Paris, halving the time of the trip. Meanwhile, military pilots were testing the limits of terrestrial flight. In 1947, American pilot Chuck Yeager, piloting a Bell X-1 jet, officially exceeded Mach 1, the speed of sound (approximately 660 miles per hour). Although supersonic flight led to outer space programs, it failed commercially. Concorde, the British-French luxury passenger plane, could fly at twice the speed of sound but was expensive to operate and limited to certain airports. The Concorde fleet was withdrawn from service in 2003, three years after its only fatal crash. The Space Race began on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite, into earth orbit. Sputnik was no bigger than a basketball, but its successful 98-minute trip was seen by alarmed Americans as a huge Soviet victory. Within months, the United States kicked its embryonic space program into high gear. In June 1958, Congress authorized the creation of NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Although the Soviet Union and United States were the main competitors in the space program, France, under Premier Charles de Gaulle, and other nations were also motivated by Sputnik. The Soviets were first to put humans in space; only American missions set humans on the Moon, the first time in 1969. As the cold war waned, national prestige missions mostly gave way to scientific space exploration and commercial ventures. The U.S. Space Shuttle program began in 1972. The Soviet Union manned a space station, which later became an international endeavor. Europe’s Ariane program in 1980 became a private venture that marketed space opportunities, including satellite launches. In 2003, China successfully launched an astronaut. Astronomers and cosmologists sought more basic information about the universe—its age, origins, and size. American Edwin Hubble and Briton Stephen Hawking were among those seeking to define the beginning of the universe. The so-called big bang theory, now accepted by virtually all scientists, posits an explosion 10 to 15 billion years ago, with Earth’s solar system appearing about 5 billion years ago. Hubble (1889–1953) was honored in 1990 when the Hubble Space Telescope began sending back images of the universe unimpeded by Earth’s atmosphere. Unmanned missions
xxxiv 1950 to the Present to the Moon, Mars, and other planets have also resulted in new information and recategorizations of planets and other heavenly bodies. Energy. Finding sufficient energy for a growing and industrializing world population proved to be a major challenge. Soon after the United States dropped its two atomic bombs in 1945, some physicists and business interests began to promote peaceful uses of atomic energy. Although hundreds of nuclear-fueled power plants are operating around the world, especially in Japan and Europe, an atomic age of abundant clean energy did not come to pass in the 20th century. Nuclear energy’s beginning as a fearful weapon that caused not only instant deaths but lingering radiation sickness did not help its image. Nor did the United States’s development of an even more destructive hydrogen bomb. In 1963, the United States and Soviet Union acknowledged some of these concerns, signing a treaty that required weapons tests underground to minimize atmospheric contamination Electric utilities using fossil fuels—coal and petroleum—produce greater air pollution than nuclear power plants, but they enjoyed several advantages. Less heavily regulated, they also did not need to store or process radioactive waste that could last for thousands of years, as spent plutonium fuel did. Nuclear plants also required constant cooling. Cooling water inevitably got hot as it circulated through reactors. Although this water was not radioactive, it could cause thermal pollution if dumped into local rivers and was implicated in the deaths of fish and other aquatic life. By the 1960s, ecologists were describing these adverse effects and enthusiasm for nuclear plants was waning. A near disaster at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979, followed in 1986 by a reactor meltdown in Chernobyl, Ukraine, that spread high levels of radiation across much of western Europe, brought new nuclear projects almost to a halt. Late in the century, evidence of global warming mounted as ice sheets in the Arctic and Antarctic began melting rapidly. Carbon dioxide levels climbed, and the protective ozone layer shrank. Although Earth had experienced cycles of abnormal warmth and cold even before humans appeared, most scientists and some political leaders feared that human activity was seriously disrupting the world’s climate. They urged energy conservation and alternatives to carbon-rich oil and coal, such as solar and wind power, hydrogen, and synthetic fuels. In 2005, 140 nations ratified the Kyoto Protocols, designed to limit destructive emissions. The United States, proportionally the world’s largest energy user, declined to sign the treaty. Chemistry and Material Science. New synthetics enabled the construction of cheaper, betterinsulated houses, taller office buildings, and safer roads and bridges. Plastics, along with resins and epoxy, came into their own in the 1950s, usually replacing traditional natural materials. From noiron polyester clothing to nonstick cookware, from fireproofing to mold-proofing, companies like Monsanto, BASF, and DuPont promised “better living through chemistry.” Pharmaceutical chemists, like Germany’s Bayer, engineered new medicines and made them easier to use. Agricultural pesticides significantly improved crop yields. But side effects rose in tandem with chemistry’s proliferating consumer and industrial applications. Nearly indestructible, plastics soon glutted landfills. In 1962, scientist Rachel Carson blamed DDT, a powerful insecticide formulated by Swiss scientists in the 1930s, for bird deaths. At Love Canal in Niagara Falls, New York, industrial wastes left behind by a chemical company were blamed in 1978 for illnesses affecting both adults and children, whose school was built atop a toxic dump. In the Indian industrial city Bhopal in 1984, a Union Carbide plant leaked the pesticide methyl isocyanate, exposing 500,000 people to sickening fumes and killing thousands. The Bhopal area was still contaminated 20 years later. The Information Age. ENIAC, the first electronic computer, was completed in 1945 at the University of Pennsylvania under a military contract. Engineer J. Presper Eckert and physicist John W. Mauchly’s enormous device was powered by 18,000 vacuum tubes and performed 5,000 calculations per second. Hungarian refugee John von Neumann soon after developed what became the basic architecture of computer systems. The invention of transistors by lab scientists at Bell Laboratories in 1948 eventually eliminated clumsy vacuum tubes and paved the way for microchips that
1950 to the Present xxxv would make computers and many other digital devices much smaller, cheaper, and more powerful. While computers allegedly reduced paper documents, new copying and printing technologies only increased the flood. The process that would eventually be trademarked by the Xerox Corporation was invented in 1938 but did not become commercially viable until the 1960s. As computers found ways to “talk” to each other, old-line consumer businesses like Corning Glass became suppliers of fiber-optic technology, carrying millions of data and voice messages around the world. New opportunities for instant worldwide communication proved to be both a promise and a threat. Despite unequal access across national and class lines, these devices were readily adapted in most societies. It seemed that the Internet might do to printed books and newspapers what automobiles had done to railroads. Human Engineering. Deoxyribonucleic acid—DNA—might be the most important biological breakthrough in human history. Identified and decoded in 1953 by researchers James Watson, Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins, and Rosalind Franklin, this double helix composed of four protein building blocks has been used to identify criminals, trace ancestors, and pinpoint disease processes. The Human Genome was “mapped” in 2000 by multinational efforts involving both university geneticists and commercial DNA scientists. DNA holds out the promise of eradicating genetic diseases but has also raised troubling ethical issues of privacy, eugenics, and equality of medical care. New reproductive technologies are especially controversial. In Britain in 1978, the first healthy “test tube” baby was born after her father’s sperm and mother’s eggs were mixed by physicians in a laboratory. In vitro fertilization, as it is now called, became a relatively routine technique for couples struggling with infertility. Controversy grew as some fertilization techniques produced multiple births, and a few women past menopause used medical techniques to carry babies to term. Socalled boutique babies also raised ethical questions. At least theoretically, parents could choose their child’s sex or sexual orientation, their height and looks, or their IQ and mental proclivities. Some ethicists are disturbed by these developments, seeing them as a form of prenatal eugenics. In 1955 doctors Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin independently developed vaccines to end polio, a waterborne viral disease that crippled or killed. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who contracted polio in 1920, was America’s most famous victim of the prevaccine disease. A few years later, smallpox was declared eradicated. For a while, it looked as though medical advances would soon end most human disease. New drugs, including medications for mental illnesses, indeed prolonged and improved lifespans. But access to medical care was extremely inequitable, even in wealthy nations like the United States, and more so in less-developed societies. America’s “War on Cancer” made progress but found few certain cures. The shocking emergence in the 1980s of previously unknown diseases —particularly HIV/AIDS—convincingly showed that human scientific knowledge had not yet created a perfect world. Social and Class Relations Major social and class changes occurred around the world in the post–World War II era. In the United States, the GI Bill enabled hundreds of thousands of young veterans to attend university, thereby opening up white-collar and professional jobs for an entire generation of working class or rural youth. After the war, there was also a huge baby boom in the United States, Europe, and Australasia. In the United States, many families moved from agricultural or urban areas to the suburbs, often buying new homes with loans provided for veterans. Road systems, shopping malls, schools, and hospitals were constructed to provide services for these new residents. The same trends were followed by the peoples in western Europe, Canada, and Australia. In Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, many young people and families flocked to the cities to find work and better ways of life. Urbanization became a global phenomenon in the last half of the 20th century. By 2006 more than 8 million Chinese peasants annually were moving into cities to find work. Whereas Great Britain had five cities of over a million people, China by 2000 had 90. In Central and South America, where social and class relations were most starkly contrasted, urban populations swelled and vast slums sprang up in major cities like São Paulo, Bogotá, and Lima. Similarly
xxxvi 1950 to the Present large slums, inhabited mostly by migrants from rural regions, also surrounded many African and Asian cities. Higher population density also made many more people vulnerable to natural disasters such as the 2004 tsunami that devastated parts of Southeast Asia, or the periodic earthquakes that have killed tens of thousands in Turkey, Iran, and Indonesia. During the 1950s and 1960s, the struggle for independence in Asia and Africa led to the creation of a host of newly independent states that often turned toward the Soviet model of a planned economy in attempts to foster rapid development. In Central and South America working-class peoples’ organizations began to emerge in both rural and urban areas. In contrast, in industrialized nations such as the United States trade union membership dropped. With end of the cold war, most formerly Communist nations, as well as those like India that had emulated the socialist model, dismantled state-owned enterprises in favor of capitalism and privatization. After the death of Mao Zedong, China also abandoned most state-owned enterprises in favor of free-market ones. The gap between the rich and poor globally, and within many nations, widened in the later part of the 20th century. In the post–cold war era, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank often demanded privatization and opening up of markets as prerequisites for loans and assistance to African, Asian, and Latin American nations. As socialist economies in eastern Europe collapsed or were dismantled, many workers lost the social safety net that socialist states had once provided. Nations in western Europe continued to provide a wide range of social benefits including healthcare for their citizens, while some oil rich Middle Eastern nations such as Kuwait and Libya implemented sweeping welfare states to provide free education, health care, and a host of other benefits for their citizens. In contrast, although one of the richest and most powerful nations on Earth, the United States failed to implement universal health care for its citizens. By 2006 almost a billion people (out of a world total of over 6 billion)—mostly in Africa, Central and South America, and parts of Asia—lived below the extreme poverty line of $1 per day. Although wealthy European nations, the United States, and Japan talked about and implemented some debt renegotiations or cancellations, huge debts continued to burden the poorest countries. The status of women and family life also continued to undergo major changes in the second half of the 20th century. Beginning in the 1960s, women in Western nations again entered the workforce in large numbers. The development of the birth control pill and other forms of contraception in the 1950s and beyond opened new social horizons for women, while the Kinsey Report on Sex in 1948 resulted in a more open attitude on sexuality. Laws that made abortion legal were enacted in many Western nations and Japan. To prevent a continuing population explosion, China had enacted a strict one-child-per-couple rule by 1980. Abortion also became a major issue of social and political conflict in the United States and some other nations. Likewise, homosexual and lesbian demands for equal rights exacerbated political differences between liberals and conservatives, especially in the United States. New generations of feminists also demanded the extension of equal rights and fuller political and economic participation for women around the world. For example, Doria Shafik in Egypt campaigned for voting rights for women and better educational opportunities, while Simone de Beauvoir of France, Betty Friedan in the United States, and Germaine Greer from Australia called for equality in jobs, equal pay for equal work, and changes in social mores on housework and child care and other traditional female roles. Old stereotypes of “women’s” versus “men’s” work were challenged. Women also played important roles in revolutions in the developing nations, as in Vietnam and Algeria. While many women have risen to lead their governments, many others failed to gain equal rights in their post-independence countries. Women’s international congresses in Mexico, China, and elsewhere have continued to address the problems of persistent inequality of payment for work, human rights, and access to education. Women’s rights have also been set back in the United States by the failure to gain ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment and in many Muslim countries because of fundamentalist interpretations of Islam. On the positive side, Wangari Muta Maathai in Kenya, a government minister and activist, championed environmental and women’s rights; she empowered women by providing seedlings to women
1950 to the Present xxxvii to plant in public and private lands in exchange for small remuneration and won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize. Muslim women feminists Fatima Mernissi of Morocco and Shirin Ebadi of Iran (the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner) both wrote about rights of Muslim women; their work provided liberal interpretations of Islamic tradition and law and promoted feminism as part of Islam. Nawal al Saddawi of Egypt and others also spoke out against crimes of honor and physical domestic abuse, which is a global problem. The Gameen Bank, begun by the economist Mohammad Yunus from Bangladesh, has made hundreds of thousands of microloans to women to empower them economically. This model has been copied in several countries, and Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. Women have been elected as president or prime minister in Great Britain, Germany, Turkey, Pakistan, India, and a host of other nations. In 2006, Michelle Bachelet was elected as president of Chile, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as president in Liberia—nations whose political systems had previously been dominated by men. The populations of Western countries, Japan, and even China also became older as life spans extended, owing to better health care, lowering of birth rates, and new treatments for a host of physical problems. Japanese men and women enjoyed the longest life span worldwide. In contrast, from the 1970s on, many in Africa were condemned to early deaths that were, in part, caused by poverty, high infant mortality, and disease, especially HIV and AIDS. In Africa over a dozen nations had higher under-five infant mortality rates in 2006 than in 1990, and India had one of the highest numbers per capita of maternal deaths per year. The rights of children also continued to be imperiled in many poor nations, where they often had to work in dangerous conditions in order to provide food for their families. To ameliorate such abuses, the United Nations launched campaigns against child exploitation, while international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in the United States devoted vast sums of money to address problems of international public health, especially such diseases as polio and AIDS. In the 1960s, university students led a young people’s movement in the West that challenged old traditions in social behavior, fashion, music, and politics. The hippies of the era advocated a lifestyle of “making love not war” and urged their peers to “drop out and tune in” with drugs, rock and roll music, and sex. The civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s in the United States struggled to achieve equal rights for African Americans, long a social and economic underclass. Martin Luther King, Jr., led a nonviolent struggle against segregation and helped to achieve more equal political and legal rights. But riots and protests, coupled with mounting opposition to U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam, polarized American society. King and other leaders were assassinated, and protesting students at Kent State University in Ohio were shot by the National Guard in the 1960s. Blacks in South Africa also waged a protracted struggle against the apartheid system of total racial segregation. The African National Congress (ANC) led by Nelson Mandela ultimately resorted to violence to dismantle apartheid; it finally gained full political and social rights in 1990s. Indigenous peoples in Latin and South America and Canada, Australia, and New Zealand also sought and often gained improved rights and status. Rigoberta Menchú was awarded the 1992 Nobel Prize for Peace for her struggle for the rights of indigenous peoples in the Western Hemisphere. Because inequities continued to exist, the struggles for social and class equality appeared certain to continue well into the 21st century. Trade and Cultural Exchanges World War II provided full employment and production to the U.S. economy, which allowed it to dominate world trade and industry in the war’s immediate aftermath. In contrast, the infrastructures of all of the other major manufacturing nations in Europe and Japan had been largely destroyed by the war. These factors allowed U.S.-based corporations to enjoy an almost total monopoly in the manufacturing of steel, automobiles, and a host of other consumer goods for the domestic and international markets in the 1950s. However, as Europe and Japan recovered from the effects of the war in
xxxviii 1950 to the Present the 1960s, the U.S. trade advantages began to diminish. The oil shocks of the 1970s revealed U.S. energy dependency on foreign sources, while its aging industrial infrastructure made it difficult to compete with modern and more efficient manufacturers overseas. In addition to western Europe, Japan emerged as a major economic competitor, followed by the “little dragons,” namely South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan, which also began to compete for international markets. Partly in response to lower labor costs, U.S. corporations began to move production facilities from union-protected plants in the United States to plants in those countries. At the same time the European Common Market, begun after World War II, evolved by the late 1990s into the European Union (EU), which included most of the nations of western Europe. The EU became a third major economic powerhouse, along with the United States and Japan. The development and improvement of computers from the mid-1950s helped to revolutionize global trading and business. The computer revolution also made it possible for U.S. companies to outsource jobs to lower-cost English-speaking countries such as India or Ireland. The development of copiers in the 1970s and then faxes helped to facilitate trading and business transactions across vast distances. Late in the 20th century, the World Wide Web, satellites, and cell phones made business and trade communications almost instantaneous. With the end of the cold war by the early 1990s, Western capitalist countries led by the United States moved to globalize and privatize the world’s economic system. The IMF and World Bank made economic restructuring conditions for aid and loans to poor countries in the Global South. Nations seeking loans also had to lower protective tariffs and open their markets to goods from the West. This increased trade of goods from the West but often led to the further impoverishment of already poor nations. The most important world trade organization was the World Trade Organization (WTO), which included most industrialized nations, although Russia and India had not been admitted as of 2007. Important regional trading organizations promoting free trade were established; they included the EU, North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Andean Group (AG), Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in the former Soviet Union, and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in the Middle East. There was also a standardization of “floating currencies,” but the continued strength of the dollar favored the United States, although the growth of European currency (the euro) emerged as a possible rival in the early 21st century. Africa lagged behind the world economically. It remained a source for raw materials and sometimes was used as a dumping ground for both low-quality goods and waste products from the industrialized countries. The gap between wealthy and poor nations continued to grow in the latter part of the 20th century despite economic conferences attended by leaders of wealthy nations that called for the refinancing of global debt, especially for poor nations in Africa. In the Millennium Summit in 2000, rich nations promised assistance to help poor nations out of the cycle of poverty by increasing education and health care and eradicating hunger while fighting virulent diseases such as malaria and AIDS by working with poor nations. However, by 2006 much remained undone, while the rich continued to grow richer and the poor continued to eke out livings through trade in raw materials and inefficiently produced food products. Increasing populations continued to undermine economic growth in many nations, especially in Africa but also in some parts of Asia. However, by the early 21st century, India and China, both previously low-income nations, had emerged as new economic and manufacturing giants, exporting a wide range of goods around the world and accumulating trade surpluses. They were followed by Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia, which also enjoyed rapid economic growth. The United States, in particular, had a huge trade deficit with China. The 20th century was also marked by the globalization of Western culture. The United States led the way as American movie and television stars, music, fashion, and even advertising became increasingly popular around the world. However, film industries in Egypt and Mumbai (Bombay), India, known as Bollywood (three times larger than Hollywood production), also enjoyed great popularity for audiences in the Middle East and Asia. Beginning in the 1980s, color television, sat-
1950 to the Present xxxix ellite systems, videocassettes, and cell phone networks all provided easy and relatively inexpensive access to wide a range of musical, artistic, and dramatic productions throughout the world. International hotel and fast food chains also helped to popularize Western tastes. Tourism, boosted by cheap jet airplane travel, enabled millions to see and enjoy other cultures. The 1960s was a decade of major cultural changes, especially among Western youth and the elites worldwide. The Woodstock rock festival in 1969 was a centerpiece of the hippie generation, which advocated “turning on, tuning in, and dropping out” and rock and roll music and dance. Cultural fusions were particularly apparent in music. Western rock-and-roll musicians helped to popularize Africa, Caribbean, and other traditional music and sometimes brought indigenous artists from Africa and South America to the attention of international audiences for the first time. Jazz, hip hop, Latin influences, and rai (a fusion of traditional Arabic and urban Western motifs) from North Africa attracted music lovers from around the world. Similar fusions of indigenous materials and motifs, along with eco-friendly styles, in art and architecture also became popular. While English became the universal second language, attempts were made to preserve and revitalize indigenous languages. The Nigerian author, Wole Soyinka, spoke widely on the awareness among Africans of their own rich cultural heritage. For example, the Kenyan novelist Ngugi wa Thiong’o wrote in his native language Gikuyu, which had been banned in his school while the British ruled Kenya. Similarly, Amadou Hampate Ba of Mali spoke impassionately at UNESCO to preserve African oral traditions, or, as he expressed it, “In Africa, when an old man dies, it is like a whole library burning down.” The tensions between secularism and religion apparent at the beginning of the 20th century intensified at its end. While western European societies became increasingly secular, by the 1970s militant Islamists across the Muslim world wanted to return to early Islamic practices and governments that operated under Islamic law and challenged Western cultural hegemony. Some Christian fundamentalists in the West, especially in the United States, Hindus in India, and Jews in Israel also wanted to created religiously based governments and judicial systems in their nations. Although the conflict of secular Westernization with tradition and religion promised to continue in the Islamic world, other leaders in these nations expressed their desires for the preservation of the best of their own traditional cultures with the adaptation of what they considered the best of Western civilization. Hence, ongoing and seemingly endless technological advances made the world smaller, enabling peoples to travel, trade, and communicate almost instantaneously. It also provided the means through which the rich industrialized nations could dominate and largely control world trade and communications and popularize Western culture worldwide. At the same time, peoples around the world attempted, with varying degrees of success, to preserve their ancient traditions, languages, and religions. Some sought to maintain their individual societies through divisive and sometimes violent racism, sectarianism, and ethnocentrism. However, as the 21st century progressed, many others struggled to maintain their individuality, taking the best of other cultures while sharing the best of their own. Warfare Warfare in the second half of the 20th century was dominated by the cold war, which for 45 years pitted nuclear superpowers, the United States and Soviet Union, against one another. At the same time, this era also experienced extensive ethnic, religious, and territorial conflict. This often meant that military forces equipped with technologically advanced weapons of mass destruction found themselves in battle with guerrilla fighters armed with makeshift or outdated weapons. The wellequipped warriors did not always win. The waning days of World War II set new hostilities in motion as the Soviets competed with their Allies to be the first to liberate Axis-held territories in both Europe and Asia. At a 1945 conference at Yalta, three months before Germany surrendered, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt, and British prime minister Winston Churchill agreed to a buffer zone between the USSR and Germany. By 1946, Churchill, speaking at a Missouri college, was decrying
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1950 to the Present a Soviet “Iron Curtain” that was turning eastern European nations, including the Soviet sector in eastern Germany, into satellite states while projecting communist influence around the world. The cold war was under way. although the United States and Soviet Union never directly attacked one another—hence the term “cold” war—the superpowers engaged in a costly arms race and spent blood and treasure in a series of “proxy” wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. Wars of decolonization that included French Algeria, Dutch Indonesia, and French, British, Belgian, and Portuguese sub-Saharan Africa erupted in many regions still trying to throw off Western imperialism. The United States and the Soviet Union regularly used independence movements as opportunities to outdo one another by providing intelligence, arms, and covert assistance to their presumed allies. Both “proxy” and “decolonizing” wars played out in a bipolar world in which the Americans and Soviets each pressed the rest of the world’s nations to take their side. Many did so; others, including India, precariously maintained nonaligned status. Both the United States and the Soviet Union were permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, but they also took steps to secure their own allies. NATO—the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—founded in 1949, became a mutual security body prepared to respond militarily to possible Soviet incursions. Moscow responded in 1955 to NATO’s admission of West Germany by creating the Warsaw Pact, a mutual defense agreement between the Soviet Union and most eastern European nations in the Soviet orbit. The Soviet Union intervened militarily to crush revolts in Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968), and Poland (1981) and built the Berlin Wall to prevent East Germans from escaping to the West. The United States also intensified efforts to control client nations in Central America, sometimes intervening militarily to prevent the emergence there of reform movements that were, or seemed to be, inspired by communism. Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro’s embrace of the Soviet Union after 1959 was a rare failure of U.S. influence in the Western Hemisphere. Arms Race. The most significant but least-used weapon of the cold war era was the nuclear bomb and its associated adaptations. After the Soviets fabricated their own A-bomb in 1949, other nations were soon preparing to join the nuclear “club.” Since then, Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, South Africa, and North Korea have built bombs or are believed to have developed bomb technology, despite international efforts to check nuclear weapons proliferation. In 1951, the United States tested an even more powerful hydrogen, or H-, bomb and began expanding its fleet of nuclear-powered submarines. As the arms race intensified, both sides turned to rocket technology to create intercontinental ballistic missile systems; virtually all of these were designed to drop nuclear warheads on enemy targets or fire them from submarines. Many historians now agree that this bilateral binge of nuclear weapons stockpiling was a major reason why the United States and the Soviet Union managed to avoid going to war with each other. The cold war weapons buildup that produced what came to be called MAD—mutually assured destruction—certainly caused anxiety. Americans were urged to build backyard fallout shelters to protect their families from radiation. During the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Premier Nikita Khrushchev squared off over Soviet installation of nuclear weapons in Cuba. War was narrowly averted, but the likelihood that both nations could suffer deaths and damage of unprecedented magnitude helped to defuse the impasse. In 1963 Kennedy and Khrushchev signed a treaty banning above-ground nuclear testing; by the 1970s, the two nations were negotiating agreements to slow or even reduce nuclear weapons development After 1950, the U.S. Air Force emerged the big winner in the internal Pentagon race for respect and resources. The biggest, most expensive improvements in both offensive and defensive weaponry focused on manned and unmanned aircraft and missiles. Aircraft carriers and submarines dominated the seas, while versatile armored helicopters took on important combat roles. After the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik in 1957, the first satellite in orbit, the idea of “air” power took on an outer space dimension. Although the perceived Sputnik military threat fizzled, in 1983 Ronald
1950 to the Present Reagan, America’s last cold war president, proposed a strategic defense initiative, dubbed “Star Wars,” to shoot down Soviet missiles from positions in space. Proxy Wars. Three major conflicts between 1950 and 1989 demonstrated attempts by the two superpowers (and Communist China) to “win” the cold war militarily and ideologically. These were the Korean War (1950–53) and Vietnam War (1954–75), in which U.S. troops played a leading role, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979–89). None of these conflicts proved very productive for the superpowers. With the blessing of the United Nations (during a Soviet boycott of the Security Council), the United States assembled a multinational force to repel efforts by Communist North Korea to conquer pro-Western South Korea. Soon, the new Chinese Communist regime came to the aid of North Korea, complicating any chance for a United Nations–led victory. This war ended with an armistice that never became a peace treaty. Hostilities continued to break out along the DMZ (demilitarized zone) separating North and South Korea. Soviet intervention in a civil war–wracked Afghanistan ended 10 years later in a failure so profound that it became a factor in the breakup of the Soviet Union soon after. The U.S. government, interpreting the Afghan conflict through a cold war lens, provided the latest weapons, including Stinger missiles, to local warlords. A decade later, these weapons would reappear as disaffected ethnic and religious groups in Asia and the Middle East mounted anti-American and anti-Russian attacks. Vietnam was the longest of these “proxy” contests and, for a time, made Americans question national power and the U.S. role in a world of nations. As Japan withdrew from its Asian conquests at the end of World War II, the French tried to resume colonial control in Indochina. Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, a Communist, sought independence. By the time France withdrew in 1954 after a major defeat at Dien Bien Phu, the United States had assumed the role of protecting the southern sector of politically divided Vietnam from its “red” brethren in North Vietnam. For 10 years U.S. involvement in South Vietnam drew little public attention and was carried out by relatively small numbers of military advisers and intelligence agents. These Americans were supposed to strengthen South Vietnam’s military and political structures to prevent what President Dwight D. Eisenhower called the “domino effect.” This was the idea that communism had to be contained—ideologically if possible, militarily if necessary—wherever it appeared. The U.S.-backed South Vietnamese government headed by Ngo Dinh Diem was corrupt and unpopular. In 1963 a U.S.-instigated military coup assassinated Diem. In 1964, an apparent clash between North Vietnamese vessels and a U.S. warship spying in North Vietnam’s Gulf of Tonkin gave President Lyndon B. Johnson a free hand in Vietnam, despite his having no congressional declaration of war. Militarily, Vietnam was a conflict between a massively armed superpower and guerrilla fighters known as the vietcong. Aided by regular North Vietnamese troops and outfitted with Chinese and Warsaw Pact–supplied weapons, these fighters used their knowledge of Vietnam’s terrain, jungle climate, and people to fight on, despite U.S. attacks with napalm, a deadly defoliant, and air raids that dropped 8 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, more than any other country had ever experienced. One collateral casualty of Vietnam for the United States was the end of its system of universal military service. After World War II, the United States continued mandatory military training for young men. As a result, the U.S. Army expanded to 3.5 million soldiers. As manpower needs in the undeclared war in Vietnam required more American troops—peaking at 541,000 in 1969—resistance to the war also increased. College students used generous deferment policies to postpone conscription; when that failed, a friendly doctor might issue a diagnosis of disease or mental illness. Draft protesters publicly burned their Selective Service documents, and thousands fled, mostly to Canada and Sweden, to avoid the draft. Warfare in a Postcolonial and Post–Cold War World. As the Soviet Union unraveled between 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down, and 1991, when its last premier, Mikhail Gorbachev, resigned, some thought, briefly, that a time of peace might be at hand. In fact, the demise of a world order shaped by two superpowers helped intensify existing ethnic, religious, and political rivalries
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1950 to the Present and created new “hot spots” around the globe. As old-style colonialism collapsed, especially after 1960, new wars over boundaries and resources erupted in Africa and other formerly colonized regions where Western control had distorted national development. Tribal massacres in Rwanda and the Darfur region of Sudan were only the bloodiest outcomes of warfare also afflicting Congo, Liberia, and much of West Africa. “Ethnic cleansing” occurred in Europe, as Yugoslavia, once an independent socialist state, broke into warring religious and ethnic groups. India and Pakistan clashed over the disputed territory of Kashmir, becoming competing nuclear powers in the process. Persistent conflict between Israel, founded in 1948 as a Jewish state, and its Arab neighbors remained a major danger to world peace. Indeed, events in the oil-rich Middle East became even more central in the post–cold war years. Religious conflicts between some Islamist organizations and other world religions were at the heart of warfare conducted not by national armies but by small, dedicated groups using terrorist tactics, including suicide bombing, to achieve their aims. Terrorism was not a new method of warfare— Irish nationalists for years had used terror tactics against Britain—but it seemed especially effective against nations whose strength lay in conventional methods of warfare. Russian troops laid waste to the separatist Islamic region of Chechnya, but found that this neither ended Chechen guerrilla actions nor protected Russian civilians from terror attacks, even in Moscow. On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda, an Islamist group based in Afghanistan, used 19 operatives, armed only with box cutters and just enough training to pilot commercial jets, to bring down New York City’s World Trade Center and seriously damage the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C. Smaller deadly attacks in Madrid and London were later perpetrated by al-Qaeda or similar nonnational terrorist groups. The U.S.-led 2003 Second Gulf War against Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq in 2003 was a triumph for America’s sophisticated weapons but faltered amid low-tech attacks committed by warring factions upon each other and U.S. forces. As the 21st century got under way, the rapid spread of technology and almost uncontrolled sales of arms and possible “weaponized” biological and chemical agents seemed to be changing warfare from nation-state projections of power within formal rules of engagement into a dangerous free-for-all among disgruntled nations, regions, and even small groups of individuals destabilizing the world.
A Afghanistan Afghanistan is a predominantly Muslim, landlocked country bordered by Iran, Pakistan, and the former Soviet republics of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. It is not a nation-state along European lines—it shares no common language or ethnic heritage. Instead, it consists of a host of different groups, including Pashtuns, Hazaras, Tajiks, and Uzbeks. It also occupies rugged, divided terrain. This diversity has translated into a weak central state prone to interventions from the outside. From the 19th to early 20th centuries Afghanistan was caught between the Russian and British Empires as each expanded into Central Asia. During the second half of the 20th century Afghanistan again found itself a buffer between large empires, in this case between the Soviet Union and the United States. In 1933 Afghanistan’s king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, began what would become a 40-year reign, during which he would only rule directly during the final decade. Just before the end of World War II, in which Afghanistan was neutral, one of Zahir Shah’s uncles, Shah Mahmud, gained control of the country. In the immediate postwar years Shah Mahmud saw the breakdown of relations with Pakistan and Afghanistan’s subsequent movement toward the Soviet Union. Tensions with Pakistan, especially over the border issue, would characterize postwar Afghanistan’s history. The 1,300-mile border with Pakistan, the so-called Durand Line, had been established by the British decades earlier to divide the fractious Pashtun tribe. Pashtuns
ended up on both sides of the border. The departure of the British in 1947 gave Shah Mahmud and other Pashtuns in Afghanistan hope for Pashtun unification. Mahmud and others called for an independent “Pashtunistan” and encouraged rebellion on the Pakistan side of the border. In 1950 in retaliation, Pakistan halted shipments of petroleum to Afghanistan. Crippled without oil, Afghanistan turned to the Soviets and signed a major trade agreement. Pakistan, meanwhile, became an important part of the American military alliance. In 1953 Mohammed Daoud, the king’s cousin and brother-in-law and a young, Western-educated modernizer, came to power. His vigorous pursuit of Pashtun unification created more tensions with Pakistan and pushed Afghanistan further toward the Soviets. Interested in spreading and consolidating power along its border regions, the Soviet Union was eager to assist. At the same time, though, the United States also tried to win influence in Afghanistan. As part of cold war strategy, the United States wanted to create an alliance of nations along the Soviet Union’s border—Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, and Turkey. Daoud refused to join the resulting Baghdad Pact but accepted U.S. aid. During his 10 years in power, Daoud pursued a cautiously reformist agenda, in which economic development became the chief goal of the state. To help with modernizing projects, Daoud skillfully played the Soviets and the United States off of each other. Afghanistan received $500 million in aid from the United States and $2.5 billion from the Soviets. Daoud used this aid to consolidate his own power.
Afghanistan
In the early 1960s Daoud, obsessed with Pashtun unification, made payments to tribesmen on both sides of the border and spread propaganda. In 1960 he sent troops across the border. As a result the two countries severed relations in September 1961 and the border was closed to even nomadic sheepherders. In 1963 as it became clear that an extended showdown with Pakistan would only hurt Afghanistan, King Zahir Shah dismissed Daoud and took direct control of the country. The king ruled from 1963 to 1973. Within two months of taking power he had reached an agreement reestablishing diplomatic and trade relations with Pakistan. He also began an experiment in liberalization called “new democracy.” At the center of this was a new constitution, promulgated in 1964. It barred the royal family—except the king—from politics, created a partyless system of elections, extended full citizenship to all residents of the country, including non-Pashtuns, and created a secular parliament and an independent judiciary. Although Afghanis voted in elections in 1965 and 1969, the king held most of the power. After a decade of economic stagnation and political instability, the king was deposed while in Europe in 1973 by Mohammed Daoud. The economy continued to stagnate and Daoud could only maintain stability through repression. In April 1978 a communist coup forced Daoud from power. In December 1979 intending to support the proSoviet communist regime and install Soviet favorites in power, 75,000 to 80,000 Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan. The decadelong war that resulted killed approximately 1 million Afghanis and forced another 5 to 6 million into exile in Iran and Pakistan. The United States, under Jimmy Carter, responded strongly. It withdrew consideration of the SovietAmerican Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II) in the U.S. Senate, boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics, leveled economic sanctions against the Soviet Union, and increased U.S. aid to Pakistan. The United States committed to protecting the greater Persian Gulf region from outside intervention. The United States also started to funnel millions of dollars of aid through the CIA to rebel groups in Afghanistan. The Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan in 1988 and 1989. By this time Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, who had come to power in 1985, had decided that the costs of the Afghan war in both soldiers and finances outweighed the benefits. The Soviets faced a fierce insurgency within Afghanistan and a growing antiwar movement at home, as well as continued international pressure. The last Soviet troops left in February 1989.
Afghan and U.S. Army soldiers patrol a road outside of Forward Operating Base Kalagush, Afghanistan.
The communist regime in Afghanistan collapsed in April 1992. The early 1990s saw a struggle for control between the various forces within Afghanistan. In 1996 the taliban—an extremist Islamic regime backed by Pakistan—captured power. The Taliban consisted of religious students and ethnic Pashtuns, as well as roughly 80,000 to 100,000 Pakistanis. They espoused an antimodernist plan to create a “pure” Islamic society in Afghanistan, which included repressive treatment of women. The Taliban allowed al-Qaeda, an antiAmerican Islamic fundamentalist terrorist organization led by the Saudi Osama bin Laden, to establish bases in Afghanistan in return for moral and financial support. In November 2001 after the Taliban rejected international pressure to hand over al-Qaeda leaders, the United States attacked al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Joining forces with the Northern Alliance—minority Tajiks and Uzbeks from the northern part of the country—
African National Congress
the United States defeated the Taliban and destroyed the al-Qaeda bases, although it failed in its mission to capture Osama bin Laden or to destroy al-Qaeda or the Taliban completely. The December 2001 Bonn Agreements handed temporary power to Hamid Karzai, a moderate Pashtun from a prominent and traditionalist family. A new constitution, written by the Loya Jirga (national assembly), was ratified in early 2004. In October 2004, an overwhelming popular vote elected Karzai president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. After 2001 the country saw dramatic changes. Hundreds of thousands of refugees returned, pushing the population of Kabul from 1 million to 3 million. In 2005 5 million girls were attending school; four years earlier fewer than 1 million had been in school. The economy, however, was still weak and dependent upon international aid. Indeed, despite this aid in 2005, Afghanistan was moving toward becoming a narco-state. In that year roughly 2.3 million Afghanis (out of a population of 29 million) were involved in the production of poppies for opium and heroin. Poppy profits equaled 60 percent of the legal economy. Warfare also continued in isolated pockets of the country as U.S. soldiers tried to mop up remnant Taliban and al-Qaeda forces. See also disarmament, nuclear; Islamist movements. Further reading: Anderson, John Lee. “The Man in the Palace.” The New Yorker (June 6, 2005); Cullather, Nick. “Damming Afghanistan: Modernization in a Buffer State.” Journal of American History 89, no. 2 (September 2002); Rubin, Barnett R. The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and Collapse in the International System. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995. Thomas Robertson
African National Congress (ANC) Following a decade of political activism for the rights of blacks, Coloreds, and Indians in South Africa, the South African Native National Congress—later renamed the African National Congress (ANC)—was formed on January 8, 1912, in Bloemfontein. It unified the fragmented efforts of various organizations in the struggle against racial discrimination, political disenfranchisement, and economic exploitation of the majority of blacks in South Africa. Over the course of almost 80 years, the ANC used various means ranging
from writing letters to the British king, negotiations, strikes, and boycotts to armed struggles and nonviolent mass actions to fight the apartheid system. Change came only after South African president F. W. de Klerk outlawed the discriminatory apartheid laws in 1990. As the ban against the ANC was lifted, the organization became the first ruling party in a free and democratic South Africa in 1994 with Nelson Mandela as its first black president. The ANC began its long battle against the political disenfranchisement and socioeconomic marginalization of blacks in courts of South Africa. As an economic upswing hit South Africa and intensified the need for a black work force in the early 1920s, the ANC attempted to include the dwindling rights of workers in their agenda. But the economic depression and new legislation prevented this. New laws released by the government systematically stopped the economic rise of a small black bourgeoisie. With the Land Act, the government denied black Africans the right to own land and pushed them into economically dependent positions. The government initialized the foundation of the Native Representative Council, which was meant to represent the Africans but which was effectively controlled by the white government. It actually decentralized and weakened the movement to such an extent that some pronounced the ANC literally dead in the early 1930s. The repressive legislation introduced by the government of Prime Minister Hertzog in 1935 led to renewed political activism on behalf of the ANC. In conjunction with 39 other organizations including those of coloreds, Communists, and Trotskyists, the ANC became active in the All Africa Convention (AAC) that fought racial discrimination and economic exploitation. The conservative approach of the ANC lasted until the late 1940s. With the candidacy of Jan Smuts in the presidential race of 1948, there was hope that discrimination would cease and real change would take place. This hope evaporated when Smuts was defeated and an even more discriminatory legislation was introduced. With this new legislation racial discrimination was officially legitimized and the apartheid system was born. Marriages between whites and individuals of color were prohibited (1949) and the Immorality Act (1950) forbade interracial sexual relations. The new legislation required a national roll according to racial classifications in the Population Registration Act (1950), and the Group Areas Act (1950) enacted demarcation of land use according to race, which secured the most fertile, resourceful, and beautiful
African National Congress
land for the whites and assigned marginalized areas of land to blacks as homelands. When the apartheid laws were introduced in 1948, a conflict between the older and younger generations in the ANC deepened. While the old guard wanted to continue their struggle with the same methods, but only broaden its base, the ANC Youth League envisioned a much more radical change. In 1952 the old guard of the ANC adopted the approach of the youth and joined other organizations in the National Defiance Campaign. In these campaigns the ANC activists deliberately broke the unjust apartheid laws to draw attention to them and have them examined in the courtroom. On June 26, 1955, the Congress of the People, which consisted of the ANC and other civil rights and antiapartheid organizations, formulated the so-called Freedom Charter at Kliptown. It demanded equal rights for people of all skin colors and no discrimination based on race. In 1956 the government arrested 156 leaders of the ANC and its allies and charged them with high treason using the Freedom Charter as the basis of its charge. All the accused were eventually acquitted. In the spring of 1960, the ANC began its campaign against the pass laws, which had required all blacks to carry their identification card with them at all times to justify their presence in “white areas.” On March 21 about 300 demonstrators marched peacefully against the law. The police first fired tear gas and then aimed directly at demonstrators; 69 people were killed and 180 injured. This incident became known as the Sharpe ville Massacre. Internationally, the apartheid regime of South Africa faced increasing opposition in the 1950s and 1960s. The newly independent states in Africa, organized since 1963 in the Organization of African Unity (OAU), used diplomatic and political pressure to help end apartheid. In the United States, the Civil Rights movement shed attention on global issues of segregation and discrimination. The leader of the ANC, Albert Lutuli, led millions of activists in the nonviolent campaigns and believed in the compatibility of the African and European cultures. However, some of the ANC members concluded that nonviolent acts were not suitable for South Africa and that more aggressive actions had to be applied. In 1961 the ban on the ANC forced the movement to go underground. The military wing, Umkonto de Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”), was formed to commit acts of sabotage. Mandela and nine other leaders of the ANC were arrested in 1962 and charged in the so-called Rivo-
nia Trial with 221 acts of sabotage initiated to stage a revolution. Mandela’s verdict was imprisonment for life plus five years beginning in 1964. The rest of the leadership of the ANC was forced into exile. The ANC had the backing of the masses and was able to stage actions of mass resistance against apartheid in the late 1970s and 1980s. It trained its guerrilla force in neighboring countries. In 1973 workers’ strikes beginning in Durban spread to other parts of the nation. At the segregated black universities a new movement, similar to the black consciousness movement in the United States, emerged. Strikes and class boycotts at the University of Western Cape, at Turfloop near Pietersburg, and at the University of Zululand erupted. Resistance against the so-called Bantu education, which ordered that Africans were to be taught in Afrikaans, the language of the white oppressors, exploded in June 1976 in the Soweto Uprising. In the Soweto Uprising thousands of black students marched to protest the governmental decree. The police shot and killed at least 152 demonstrators. By the end of 1977, the government had killed over 700 young students in similar incidents. In the same year, the government retreated and decided that African schools did not need to instruct their students in Afrikaans any more. During the 1980s the fight against apartheid included all areas of life. The armed wing of the ANC received increasing support for the guerrilla fight within South Africa and the organization used propaganda to create a mood for resistance. Grassroots organizations emerged all over South Africa and created the mass organization called the United Democratic Front (UDF) in 1983. Finally, on February 2, 1990, new president F. W. de Klerk introduced change to the system. He had held secret conversations with the imprisoned Mandela before assuming the presidency. Once in office, he lifted the ban on the ANC and announced Nelson Mandela’s imminent release after 27½ years of imprisonment. De Klerk not only ended the censorship of the press but also invited former liberation fighters to join the government at the negotiation table and to help prepare for a new multiracial constitution. Both Mandela and de Klerk were honored with the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in 1993. Still, in the early 1990s, even after the end of apartheid, the armed struggle in South Africa had not ended. The black organization Inkatha, led by Gatsha Butelezi, challenged the ANC. In 1994 the ANC became a registered political party and won the first elections, which were open to individuals from all races, with over 60 percent of the votes. Nelson Mandela became South
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Africa’s first postapartheid president and Thabo Mbeki followed him in 1999. Further reading: Ellis, Stephen. “The ANC in Exile.” African Affairs 90, no. 360 (1991); Feit, Edward. “Generational Conflict and African Nationalism in South Africa, 1949–1959.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 5, no. 2, (1972); McKinley, Dale T. The ANC and the Liberation Struggle. London and Chicago: Pluto Press, 1997; Nixon, Rob. “Mandela, Messianism, and the Media.” Transition 51 (1991); Official website of the ANC, http://www.anc.org.za/ lists/links.html (cited April 2006). Uta Kresse Raina
African Union The Organization of African Unity (OAU) was formed on May 23, 1963, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, by 32 decolonized African nations. Built on Ghana’s president Kwame Nkrumah’s dream of Pan-Africanism, the OAU brought the opposing groups of African nations together in a single African organization. The founding members of the OAU envisaged this unity among African states as transcending racial, ethnic, and national differences. The main goal was not only to build an alliance between the African nations but also to provide financial, diplomatic, and economic assistance for those movements that were still fighting for liberation. OAU members guaranteed each other’s national sovereignty, territorial integrity, and economic independence and aspired to end all forms of colonialism and racism on the continent. The OAU officially agreed with the charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. By the time it was replaced by the African Union (AU) in 2002, the OAU counted 53 out of the 54 African nations as its members. In the context of decolonization and the cold war, the OAU saw itself as alternative. The alliance, cooperation, and unification of the numerous newly independent African states in the 1960s signified a period of emancipation and empowerment of Africa. It drew attention to the fact that solutions to problems that single member states faced after decolonization were transferable to others and made problem solving easier. It also decreased the possibility of Africa’s falling back into political or economic dependency on the former European colonizing nations. The OAU wanted to provide newly liberated African nations with a platform of their own. In conjunction with the young nations of Asia that had achieved
national liberation they saw themselves as providing a third option beyond the ones of the superpowers. While the organization promoted African culture, the agreements of cooperation also included other major fields such as politics, diplomacy, transport, and communication. Matters of health, sanitation, nutrition, science, defense, and security also became issues of joint concern. The agreement stated that disputes between states would be settled peacefully through negotiation, mediation, conciliation, or arbitration, while the organization condemned all forms of political assassination, any subversive activities of one state against another, and stood united in its battle against apartheid. The OAU acted as referee in various border conflicts between neighboring African nations. For example, it helped to prevent the division of the national territory of Nigeria into separate countries due to armed battle between distinct ethnic groups in the Biafran War from 1967 to 1970. The OAU used its diplomatic power to strongly condemn Israel’s intervention in Egypt in the Six-Day War of 1967. It used political pressure, diplomacy, and economic boycotts to help end apartheid in South Africa. The democratic nation of South Africa joined the OAU in 1994 as the 53rd member nation. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital and the host of the first OAU meeting, became the permanent headquarters of the OAU. The OAU assembly was made up of the heads of the individual African states. The organization employed over 600 staff members that were recruited from over 40 of its member states. The OAU had an annual budget in the range of $27–$30 million. In 1997 the OAU established the African Economic Community, which envisioned a common market for the entire continent of Africa. After 39 years of existence, the OAU was criticized broadly for not having done enough for the African people. In its view it should have protected them from their own leaders who promoted corruption, persecuted political opponents, and created a new class of rich in their respective nations while the masses remained impoverished. Further reading: El-Ayouty, Yassin, ed. The Organization of African Unity After Thirty Years. Westport, CT, and London: Praeger, 1994; Organization of African Unity. Available online. URL: http://www.un.org/popin/oau/oauhome.htm (cited July 2006); van Walraven, Klaas. Dreams of Power: The Role of the Organization of African Unity in the Politics of Africa. Leiden: Ashgate, 1999. Uta Kresse Raina
AIDS crisis
AIDS crisis The AIDS epidemic has been considered one of the most important health emergencies in the contemporary world due to the destabilizing social, economic, and political consequences of its global spread and the unsuccessful attempts to develop vaccination against it. At the same time, some scientists have argued that the problem in tackling AIDS is not so much the insufficient scientific and medical developments, but the politics of the global response to the disease. The acronym AIDS stands for acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. From a medical perspective, AIDS is not a singular disease, but a series of symptoms that occur for an individual person who has acquired the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). HIV belongs to the family of retroviruses, first described in the 1970s. The characteristic trait of viruses from that family is that their genetic material is encoded in ribonucleic acid (RNA), which is located in the inner core of the viruses and surrounded by an outer membrane made up of the fatty material taken from the cells of the infected person. Furthermore, HIV belongs to the virus group of lentiviruses, which produce latent infections. This means that in the initial state of HIV infection, the virus remains inactive and asymptomatic, and its genetic material is hidden in the cell for a period of time. In some cases, HIV has remained inactive indefinitely. In most of the cases, after the inactive period, HIV does progressive damage to the immune and nervous systems. The first stage of HIV activity in the body of an infected person is called AIDS-related complex (ARC). In ARC, only a partial deficiency of the immune system occurs. The second state of HIV activity is AIDS, which is a more advanced immunodeficiency. There are three main transmission modes of HIV: through sexual penetrative intercourse, the transfusion of blood or blood-related products, and from infected mother to child during birth or breast-feeding. Furthermore three important characteristics of the HIV infection have been identified. First, the condition is incurable. Second, the person with HIV is infectious for life, including during the initial (inactive) HIV infection period. Third, the effect of the HIV infection is the increased vulnerability to various infections due to the undermined immune system. Therefore HIV/AIDS has been linked with a series of other diseases such as pneumonia, various fungal and protozoa infections, lymphoma, and Kaposi sarcoma (a rare form of skin tissue cancer).
It is believed that the origins of HIV are linked to an HIV-related virus located in Africa. There are two different types of HIV: HIV-1 and HIV-2 (the latter is present almost exclusively in Africa). The first cases of AIDS infection were observed in 1977–80 by doctors in the United States, who identified clusters of a previously rare health disorder among members of the gay communities in San Francisco and New York. Because the first AIDS cases were diagnosed in gay communities, the condition was initially termed Gay-Related Immune Deficiency Syndrome (GRID). AIDS-related diseases were later observed also among hemophiliacs and recipients of blood transfusions, prostitutes, intravenous drug users, and infants of drug-using women. In 1984, the virus causing AIDS was identified by the French researcher Luc Montagnier of the Pasteur Institute in Paris and confirmed by an American researcher, Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute. Also in 1984 the first test for AIDS was developed. The first commonly used tests for AIDS were the ELISA test and the Western blot test. After the 1980s the statistics of HIV epidemiology showed a constant rise in the number of infected persons and those directly affected by AIDS. The major group at risk was identified by the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) as sexually active adults and adolescents between 15 and 50 years. According to UNAIDS in 2005 there were approximately 40.3 million people living with AIDS, and over 150 million directly affected by AIDS. It is also important to place the HIV/AIDS epidemic in a broader demographic context. The statistics of the HIV/AIDS Department of the World Health Organization (WHO) showed that in sub-Saharan Africa, in Asia, and in the former Soviet republics young women with low incomes and living in rural areas constitute a particularly vulnerable social group, with the highest rate of new HIV infections. Global and national responses to AIDS included various prevention and treatment policies. After 1996 the so-called antiretroviral drugs (ARVs), compounds that treat the virus infections, were in use. Antiretroviral drugs were available in single therapies, double therapies, and triple therapies. One example of an antiretroviral therapy was the Highly Active Anti-retroviral Therapy, which had a relatively high cost of between US$10,000 and $20,000 per patient per year. Most of the populations of the North American and western and central European regions could gain access to antiretroviral drugs and antiretroviral therapies. This systematically decreased the number of deaths due to AIDS-related diseases. As a result, in the Western
world living with AIDS was gradually transformed into an endurable and nonfatal condition. The costs of the drugs and treatments made them inaccessible for most of the world. The 13th World AIDS Conference in Durban in 2000 marked a significant shift of global attention to AIDS treatment. In 2002 the UN set up the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) in order to spawn more generous international funding of AIDS-related programs and to increase the supplies of ARVs. GFATM functions as a platform for cooperation between the public sector, the private sector, and the civic society. Between 2003 and 2005 GFATM granted $4.3 billion to various projects in 128 countries, including $1.9 billion specifically to HIV-related projects. Other key donor organizations are the World Bank’s Multi-Country HIV/AIDS Program (MAP), the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the European Union HIV/AIDS Programme. There are also numerous private foundations, charities, and private-sector support networks that participate in the global struggle against HIV/AIDS. In 2003 UNAIDS and the World Heath Organization initiated a campaign known as the “3 by 5” initiative, which aimed at making ARVs available to 3 million people in poor- and middle-income countries by 2005. In 2003 an HIV vaccination clinical trial proved unsuccessful. The obstacles to developing a vaccination against HIV included mutability of the virus, what effective immunological reaction the vaccination should generate, and various practical problems in the testing of the vaccine. The Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise created a forum for public and private organizations, as well as research institutes, to cooperate and generate funding for the development of an HIV vaccine. Important organizations working on an HIV vaccine included the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative in New York. In the Western world, in particular in the United States, where AIDS was initially linked to marginal social groups, it raised prejudices and contributed to their stigmatization and discrimination in employment, education, residence, and health care. The religious standpoint created a link between liberal sexual patterns and the spread of AIDS, which framed AIDS as an issue of personal morality, guilt, and punishment. In contrast, leftist standpoints phrased the AIDS issue as a problem of the protection of civil liberties and nondiscrimination. In spite of contrary medical evidence, it was a widespread public belief in the 1980s that AIDS could be contracted by casual contact. This raised a
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number of social and legal controversies where individual rights to privacy were weighed against the collective right to protection from the spread of the disease. The main site of the AIDS epidemic remains sub-Saharan Africa, where the virus spread primarily through unprotected heterosexual intercourse and reuse of medical instruments and contaminated blood supplies. Experts suggested that the dynamics of the spread of AIDS and its social and geographical distribution in sub-Saharan Africa both reflected and exacerbated the systemic characteristics of the migration and mobility patterns, the social sexual behaviors, the social inequalities and impoverishment, and the breakdown of family structures in the region. A study by the investment bank ING Barings indicated that in South Africa HIV/AIDS policies cost over 15 percent of the country’s GDP. The personal and collective consequences of the AIDS epidemic in Africa were equally disruptive. One of the most serious consequences of HIV/AIDS in Africa was the increased number of orphans, whose parents died due to AIDSrelated diseases. It was predicted that by 2010 the number of orphans in Africa would reach 40 million, out of which approximately 50 percent would be orphaned by causes related to HIV/AIDS. Further reading: Barnett, Tony, and Alan Whiteside. AIDS in the Twenty-First Century: Disease and Globalization. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002; Fan, Hung, Ross F. Coner, and Luis P. Villarreal. AIDS: Science and Society. Boston: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 2004; Kopp, Christine. The New Era of AIDS: HIV and Medicine in Times of Transition. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002; Mustafa, Faizan. AIDS, Law and Human Rights. New Delhi: Institute of Objective Studies, 1998; Preda, Alex. AIDS, Rhetoric, and Medical Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Magdalena Zolkos
Akihito
(1933– ) emperor of Japan Akihito became Japan’s 125th reigning emperor in 1989 upon the death of his father, Hirohito. According to Japanese mythology, the emperors, beginning with the legendary Jimmu, descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu, had ruled over the country since 660 b.c.e. Although the emperors had de jure powers, it was the shoguns who ruled over most of Japanese history. With the Meiji
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estoration in 1868, Emperor Meiji became the head of R state, holding sovereign power. The postwar constitution of 1947 again reduced the role of the emperor to one of symbolism. Akihito was born on December 23, 1933, the first male child of Emperor Hirohito and Empress Nagako. In keeping with the royal tradition, Akihito at the age of three was separated from his parents and was brought up by court attendants, tutors, chamberlains, and nurses. However, in a departure from custom, at the age of six Akihito was sent to school along with commoners. During World War II when the Allied countries, led by the United States, attacked Japan, Akihito was moved to other provincial cities far away from Tokyo for safety. At the end of the war in 1945, when the U.S. Army occupied Japan, Akihito attended high school and college with the sons of the elite class. A Philadelphia Quaker, Elizabeth Gray Vining, was made Akihito’s personal tutor and taught him Western customs and values. He also briefly studied politics and civics at Gakushuin University in Tokyo. Akihito was invested as a crown prince in 1952, when he was 18. In 1959 he married Shoda Michiko; she was the first commoner to marry into the imperial family. When his father died on January 7, 1989, at the age of 87, Akihito became the emperor and took his assigned role as the symbolic head of state. Further reading: Keene, Donald. Emperor of Japan. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002; Kinoshita, June, and Nicholas Palevsky. Gateway to Japan. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1998; Vining, Elizabeth Gray. Windows for the Crown Prince: Akihito of Japan. New York: Tuttle Publishers, 1990. Mohammed Badrul Alam
Algerian revolution The Algerian war against French colonialism lasted from 1954 to 1962, when Algeria gained its independence. In 1954 armed attacks occurred at 70 different points scattered throughout the nation. Having just suffered a humiliating defeat by the Vietnamese at Dien Bien Phu, the French army was determined to win in Algeria. The French colons (colonists) in Algeria were also determined to keep “Algérie Française.” The tactics adopted by the Algerians and Vietnamese and the French
and the Americans were remarkably similar and brought similar results as well. The Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) was an outgrowth of earlier nationalist movements. Ahmad Ben Bella (1916?– ), in addition to Belkacem Krim, Muhammad Khidr, and Hussein Ait Ahmad, led the movement. Under the FLN Algeria was divided into six wilayas, or districts, each with an FLN organization and leader acting within a cell system. The top echelon of FLN leaders met periodically to coordinate strategy. The wilayas and the cell system provided flexibility and some degree of security in a war where the French enjoyed military superiority. As with other revolutions in developing countries the FLN adopted guerrilla warfare tactics, avoided direct confrontation with French troops, and attacked civilian targets as well as French military sites. With few advanced weapons, the FLN used the so-called bombs-in-baskets approach to inflict maximum damage on the French army and colons. Algerian women were also active in the movement, serving as lookouts, distributing food and arms to fighters, and sometimes participating in the fighting as well. In 1954 the French had 50,000 soldiers in Algeria, by the war’s end they had over half a million soldiers in Algeria and they were still not winning. The French had clear-cut superiority in armaments, including planes and advanced firepower, but the Algerians knew the terrain, had popular support, and were determined to fight in spite of high costs until they achieved the goal of independence. The French used air strikes, napalm, pacification projects of rounding up civilians in rural areas and imprisoning them in internment camps, and burning villages. These tactics only increased local support for the FLN. The French army also tortured FLN captives. When word of the torture reached mainland France many turned against the war. In an attempt to focus their power in Algeria, the French granted Morocco and Tunisia independence in 1956, but when FLN fighters took refuge in these neighboring countries, the French attacked them. The war expanded much as the fighting in Vietnam spread into Laos and Cambodia. In 1956 French agents skyjacked the Moroccan plane carrying Ben Bella to a meeting of FLN leaders in Tunis and imprisoned him. One of the first skyjackings, the tactic was condemned by the international community but became more commonplace in subsequent decades. French forces defeated the FLN in Algiers but the FLN merely moved its operations elsewhere in the country, forcing French troops to move. Then the FLN slow-
ly reconstituted itself in Algiers and the French were forced to return to fighting in the same city where they had previously declared victory. In 1958 General Charles de Gaulle came to power in France with the support of the army and the colons, who believed he would win the war in Algeria. De Gaulle traveled to Algeria, where he pointedly did not speak about “Algérie Française.” De Gaulle realized that short of a full-scale, long-term war the French could not win in Algeria. Although he hoped for some sort of alliance between the two nations and access to the petroleum and mineral reserves in the Sahara, by 1960 de Gaulle was speaking of an Algerian Algeria. He opted for negotiations with the FLN at Evian in 1961. The negotiations dragged on and the war escalated as both sides attempted to improve their positions at the negotiating table by gaining victories on the battlefield. Furious with what they believed to be de Gaulle’s betrayal, dissident army officers led an abortive coup in 1961. The colons organized into the extremist Secret Army Organization (OAS) and attempted to bring the war home to France by trying to assassinate de Gaulle in 1961. The OAS even attempted to bomb the Eiffel Tower, a move that was thwarted by French intelligence services. The war polarized French society between those who opposed the war—including intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre, students, and labor unions—and those, especially in the army, who supported the war effort. In 1962 Algeria became formally independent, and Ben Bella returned as the first premier and later as president. The economy of Algeria was in ruins. As many as a million Algerians had perished in the war and another million had been made homeless. Refusing to live in independent Algeria, the colons left en masse, many moving to Spain rather than to France under de Gaulle. Immediately following independence a form of spontaneous socialism, or autogestion, had evolved as homeless and unemployed Algerians took over abandoned farms and businesses and began to run them and share the profits. Initially Ben Bella supported the autogestion movement, but gradually the FLN-led government took over farms and factories along the Soviet state capitalism model. Ben Bella and his minister of defense, Houari Boumedienne (1925?–1978), championed the formal army rather than the more loosely organized guerrilla fighters and they outmaneuvered or eliminated potential rivals within the FLN leadership. Algeria adopted a neutral position in the cold war and
Allende, Salvador
sometimes, as in the 1979 U.S. hostage crisis in Iran, served as a mediator in disputes, as it was respected by both sides. Some of the Algerian infrastructure was rebuilt using petroleum revenues but the economy failed to keep pace with the population growth. In 1965 Boumedienne ousted Ben Bella, who then spent number of years in Algerian prisons; he was not released until after Boumedienne’s death, when Chadli Benjedid became president. His regime was marked by economic stagnation and privatization. As unemployment rose—particularly among the youth born after independence—many young Algerians opposed the authoritarian FLN regime and turned increasingly toward Islamist movements. When the Islamists seemed poised to win in the open and fair 1991 elections the FLN, with the support of France and the United States, cancelled the elections, thereby setting off a bloody civil war that lasted through the 1990s. Further reading: Alexander, Martin S., ed. France and the Algerian War, 1954–1962. London: Routledge, 2002; Horne, Alistair. A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962. New York: The Viking Press, 1977; Ruedy, John. Modern Algeria: The Origins and Development of a Nation. 2d ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005; Stora, Benjamin. Algeria, 1830–2000: A Short History. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004. Janice J. Terry
Allende, Salvador
(1908–1973) Chilean politician Longtime politician, medical doctor, self-proclaimed Marxist, and president of Chile’s Popular Unity (Unidad Popular) government from 1970 to 1973, Salvador Allende occupies a highly controversial place in Chilean history. The country’s only democratically elected Marxist president, Allende instituted a range of reforms that sharpened the polarization of Chilean society and led to a series of economic and political crises. He was overthrown and died in office on September 11, 1973, by a coalition of military officers backed by the country’s leading economic interests, and in collusion with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). His ousting and death ushered in the period of military dictatorship led by army general Augusto Pinochet (1973–89). Born in Valparaíso, Chile, on July 26, 1908, to a prominent leftist political family, Allende entered medical school and became active in the movement opposed
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to the dictatorship of General Carlos Ibáñez (1927–31). Cofounder of the Chilean Socialist Party in 1933, he won a seat in the country’s national legislature in 1937 and became minister of health in 1939. Making his first bid for the presidency in 1952, in which the former dictator Ibáñez triumphed, he finished a distant fourth. He ran again for president in 1958 and 1964 as the leader of the Communist-Socialist alliance (Frente de Acción Popular), founded in 1957, losing the elections but gaining a loyal political following that by 1964 comprised 39 percent of the electorate. Calling for socialism in Chile, sympathetic to the Communist regime of Fidel Castro in Cuba, and in the context of the cold war, Allende came to be viewed with deep suspicion by both the Chilean landowning and copper oligarchy and the U.S. government. In the hotly contested 1970 elections, Allende and his Popular Unity coalition won with a slim plurality of 36.5 percent, defeating Conservative Jorge Alessandri (34.9 percent) and Christian Democrat Radomiro Tomic (27.8 percent). On taking office, Allende instituted a populist strategy of freezing prices and hiking wages, which boosted consumer spending and redistributed income to favor the urban and rural poor. He also followed through on his campaign pledge to pursue a “peaceful road to socialism” by nationalizing some 200 of the country’s largest firms, many U.S.-owned, including banks and insurance companies, public utilities, and the copper, coal, and steel industries. By 1971 opposition to the reforms grew, especially among the military, large landholders, and leading industrialists. By 1972 runaway inflation compounded the political backlash, the result of higher wages, a bloated government bureaucracy, and the growth of an underground economy in response to price controls. As popular discontent mounted and the Popular Unity coalition fractured into groups divided over the pace of change, pro-Allende guerrilla groups launched an armed campaign against conservative elements. From spring 1973 a wave of strikes by copper miners, truck drivers, shopkeepers, and others compounded the regime’s mounting problems. Meanwhile, the U.S. administration of Richard Nixon and the CIA worked to undermine the regime, funding opposition groups and plotting with rightists for Allende’s overthrow. On September 11, 1973, the military assaulted the presidential palace in Santiago. By the end of the day Allende was dead—whether by his own hand or the military’s remaining a matter of dispute. Upwards of 5,000 people were killed in the coup and its aftermath, making it the bloodiest regime change in
20th-century South America. Revered by some, reviled by others, Allende and his short-lived socialist experiment, and the U.S. role in assisting the overthrow of a democratically elected president, left an enduring mark on modern Chilean and Latin American history. Further reading: Faundez, Julio. Marxism and Democracy in Chile: From 1932 to the Fall of Allende. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988; Kaufman, Edy. Crisis in Allende’s Chile: New Perspectives. New York: Praeger, 1988; Loveman, Brian. Chile: The Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. Michael J. Schroeder
Alliance for Progress Announced by U.S. President John F. Kennedy on March 13, 1961, the Alliance for Progress was a massive U.S. foreign aid program for Latin America, the biggest aimed at the underdeveloped world up to that time. Likened to the Marshall Plan in postwar Europe, its express intent was to promote economic and social development and democratic institutions across the Western Hemisphere; to raise living standards for the poorest of the poor; and to make leftist social revolution an unattractive alternative. “Those who make democracy impossible,” warned President Kennedy in announcing the plan, “will make revolution inevitable.” Most commonly interpreted in the context of the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union, as a response to Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolution of 1959, and as the U.S. foreign policy establishment’s effort to thwart the aspirations of leftist revolutionaries, the Alliance for Progress, despite some successes, is widely considered to have failed to meet its lofty goals. Pledging $20 billion in aid over 10 years, the program actually distributed an estimated $4.8 billion, the remainder of the approximately $10 billion overall U.S. contribution from 1961 to 1969 going toward loan repayment and debt service. The program came to an effective end in 1969 under President Richard Nixon, who replaced it with a new agency called Action for Progress. A refurbished version was formulated by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, in his Caribbean Basin Initiative, which suffered many of the same shortcomings as its predecessor. In August 1961 representatives from the United States and Latin American countries (save Cuba) met at
American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations
Punta del Este, Uruguay, to formulate specific objectives and targets for the program and ways to implement them. The most important of these objectives included raising per capita incomes by an average of 2.5 percent annually; land reform; trade diversification, mainly through export production; industrialization; educational reforms (including elimination of illiteracy by 1970); and price stability. The program’s theoretical underpinnings owed much to the work of U.S. economist Walter W. Rostow, and his notion of “economic take-off” (articulated in his 1960 book, The Stages of Economic Growth). He was a member of the inter-American “board of experts” (dubbed “the nine wise men”) that had final authority on the program’s specific content. The reasons for the program’s overall failure have been the subject of much debate among scholars. Most agree that deepening U.S. commitments in the Vietnam War diverted attention and resources away from Alliance programs and initiatives. Another frequently cited limitation concerns the difficulties inherent in promoting democratic institutions and land reform in societies dominated by stark divisions of social class and race, entrenched landholding oligarchies, and small groups of privileged economic and political elites. Another criticism concerns the top-down nature of the programs, which relied almost exclusively on active state support and failed to incorporate local community or grassroots organizations into their design and implementation. For these and other reasons, the Alliance for Progress achieved some successes but on the whole failed to achieve the goals articulated by President Kennedy in 1961. Further reading: Berger, Mark T. Under Northern Eyes: Latin American Studies and U.S. Hegemony in the Americas, 1898–1990. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995; Scheman, Ronald, ed. The Alliance for Progress: A Retrospective. New York: Praeger, 1988; Schoultz, Lars. Beneath the United States: A History of U.S. Policy Toward Latin America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998. Michael J. Schroeder
American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) In 1955 the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) joined to create the American Federation of Labor and Congress
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of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). The 54 national and international federated labor unions within the AFLCIO are located in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama, and U.S. dependencies. Membership in the United States as of 2005 was over 9 million. The major functions of the AFL-CIO are to lobby for the interests of organized labor and to mediate disagreements between member unions. A long-standing campaign of the federation is against the right-to-work laws that ban closed or union shops. A related issue is repeal of the Taft-Hartley Labor Act, which authorized right to work half a century ago. The AFL-CIO also works against other antilabor legislation and candidates. The first leader of the AFL was Samuel Gompers, who modeled the AFL on the British Trade Union Congress. He was conservative politically and believed that unions should work within the economic system as it was rather than trying to alter it. Gompers was followed by William Green and George Meany. Under their guidance, the AFL grew to over 10 million members by the time of its merger with the Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1955. The union’s early accomplishments were significant. Union men gained higher wages, a shorter work week and work day, workers’ compensation, laws regulating child labor, and exemption from antitrust laws. The CIO dates only to the 1930s. Green had replaced Gompers as leader of the AFL in 1924, but he maintained Gompers’s business unionism, based on crafts. By then the old crafts approach seemed outdated to some AFL members. The United States had industrialized, and mass production had replaced craftsmanship. Production workers in major industries such as steel, rubber, and automobiles lacked union protections. A strong minority of the AFL wanted the federation to begin organizing industrially. Within the AFL was a union leader with experience organizing an industry, John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers (UMW) of America. In 1935 Lewis led the dissidents in the formation of the Committee for Industrial Organization. With the sympathetic New Deal Democrats in the White House, the unions had a rare opportunity to organize American labor with the government on their side. The committee organized, winning significant victories in automobiles and steel. The CIO challenged the authority of the AFL, and the AFL revoked the charters of the 10 CIO unions. The CIO became the Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1938. The independent CIO, under Lewis until 1940 and then under Philip Murray until 1952, was more militant than the AFL. It had a Political Action Committee, led by Sidney Hillman of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union, that encouraged membership political
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American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations
President Gerald Ford (left) meeting with AFL-CIO president George Meany at the White House in 1974.
activism. The CIO attempted a major southern organizing campaign that proved fruitless in the 1940s and internal discord led to the loss of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union in 1938 and the mine workers in 1942. Still, in 1955, the CIO had 32 affiliated unions with approximately 5 million members. Both unions had internal difficulties in the 1940s. The AFL had member unions dominated by organized crime. The CIO’s radicalism brought into its member unions a number of communists. The CIO expelled 11 supposedly communist-dominated unions in 1949–50. The end of World War II was the end of the close relationship with the federal government that had allowed the AFL to grow during the 1930s. The Republicans in Congress reversed that relationship, covering unions as well as employers under unfair labor practices legislation and prohibiting the closed shop as well as the organization of supervisors and campaign contributions by unions. Union leaders had to swear that they were not communists. Passed over Truman’s veto, Taft-Hartley was a major blow to unionism. Clearly, the union leaders had reason to worry about the new Republican administration, and repeal of Taft-Hartley was an ongoing desire of the AFL-CIO. Throughout the period of separation, at least some within both unions retained an interest in reuniting the two. After the election of Eisenhower, the two leaderships agreed that the first Republican administration in 20 years would probably be unfavorable to labor. Unity was desirable. George Meany, as head of the AFL, and Walter P. Reuther, as head of the CIO, worked to bring about a merger, which occurred in 1955.
The first AFL-CIO convention elected Meany as president. In 1957 it enacted anti-racket codes and expelled the Teamsters Union for failure to meet ethical standards. In 1961 the AFL-CIO implemented mandatory arbitration of internal disputes. That failed to prevent a dust-up between Meany and Reuther, who regarded Meany as dictatorial and wanted the AFL-CIO to involve itself in civil rights and social welfare issues. Reuther wanted to be president of the AFL-CIO and felt that Meany had outlived his usefulness. Reuther’s United Automobile Workers (UAW) left the AFL-CIO in 1968. In 1969 the UAW and the Teamsters formed the Alliance for Labor Action (ALA), which sought to organize the unorganized, students, and intellectuals. Reuther died in a plane crash in 1970. Without his strong leadership, the ALA disbanded in December 1971 after proving unsuccessful as an alternative to the AFL-CIO. Meany retired in 1979, and his replacement was Lane Kirkland, the secretary-treasurer. Kirkland inherited a union in decline in an economy turning away from organized labor. It brought the UAW back into the fold in 1981, the Teamsters in 1988, and the UMW in 1989. The tide would not turn, however, and Kirkland retired under pressure in 1995. Thomas R. Donahue, secretary-treasurer become interim president, was challenged by John J. Sweeny of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), who won the first contested election in AFL-CIO history. Sweeny and United Mine Workers president Richard Trumka represented a new generation of activist union leaders, potentially a force for changing the decline of organized labor. Under Sweeny the AFL-CIO supported Democratic candidates, including Bill Clinton, and gained a sympathetic ear in the White House. Sweeny proved unable to reverse the decline in unionism due to deindustrialization and the loss of high-paying or skilled jobs in traditional union industries. Critics charged that Sweeny was exhausting the union’s funds without anything substantial to show for it. In 2005 Andrew Stern of the SEIU led an effort to force Sweeny’s retirement. Stern proposed consolidating the AFL-CIO’s member unions into 20 super unions organized by sector of the economy. He also wanted reemphasis on the organization of unrepresented workers. Failing to reform the AFL-CIO or force Sweeny out, the SEIU left the federation and created the Change to Win Federation. Further reading: Buhle, Paul. Taking Care of Business: Samuel Gompers, George Meany, Lane Kirkland, and the Trag-
Angola, Republic of
edy of American Labor. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1999; Goldfield, Michael. The Decline of Organized Labor in the United States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993; Zieger, Robert H., and Gilbert Gall. American Workers, American Unions. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. John H. Barnhill
American Indian Movement (AIM) Relations between Native peoples and U.S. federal and state governments soon after World War II swung between paternalism and indifference. Native Americans responded with a new militancy that echoed the Civil Rights movement and, by 1968, produced the American Indian Movement (AIM). “Red power,” expressed in lawsuits, sit-ins, and demonstrations—some of them violent—created greater awareness of Native rights and fostered new economic and educational initiatives. But many Indians remained desperately poor and isolated. In the 1950s federal policies reverted to a pre–New Deal relationship with Native tribes. Indians were once again urged to assimilate, giving up tribal political rights and long-standing land claims. Natives were encouraged to relocate from reservations to urban areas. More than 100 tribes were stripped of their sovereignty and benefits. The federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), never beloved but still useful to Native groups, lost much of its mission. This again changed dramatically in 1962 when President John F. Kennedy ushered in what became known as the Self-Determination Era. Kennedy was first in a series of presidents of both parties to take Indian cultural and economic claims more seriously. Natives benefited from Great Society programs. President Richard Nixon played a major role as a proponent of the 1974 Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act. By then the American Indian Movement was well under way. In 1969 AIM members occupied Alcatraz, the San Francisco Bay island formerly used as a federal prison. They would remain there, reclaiming Alcatraz as Indian land, for almost two years. In 1971 protesters briefly occupied Mount Rushmore, the South Dakota presidential monument near the 1876 site of a Sioux rout of General George Custer. Not all AIM protests were peaceful. In 1973 a violent clash at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, killed two activists and badly wounded a federal agent. It ended
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after 73 days when the Nixon administration promised to review an 1868 treaty. AIM activist Leonard Peltier, who grew up on North Dakota’s Anishinabe Turtle Mountain Reservation, received two life sentences for murdering two federal agents during a 1975 shoot-out on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Human rights groups maintain his innocence. The overall trajectory of U.S.-Native relations was toward greater autonomy and respect. Some “terminated” tribes, like the Menominee of the northern Great Lakes, had their authority restored. A 1971 Alaskan Native Claims Settlement Act and a 2000 restoration of 84,000 acres to Utah’s Ute tribe (accompanied by an official apology) advanced self-determination. During the presidency of George H. W. Bush, almost 90 percent of BIA staff had tribal roots. U.S. courts, dusting off long-ignored treaties, restored many Native rights related to fishing, farming, travel, and sovereignty. In 1979 Florida’s Seminole were the first to use court-affirmed rights to run bingo games. By the mid1990s more than 100 casinos were operating on reservation lands across the United States. Gaming and other new businesses, including tax-free sales of tobacco and other highly taxed products, enriched many tribes. Some assimilated Natives reaffiliated with their tribes to participate in this new economy. But reliance on the greed of non-Indians proved no solution for fundamental inequities. Approximately 28,000 residents of Pine Ridge, the 3,500-square-mile Oglala Sioux reservation, live with high unemployment and annual family incomes below $4,000. High suicide and infant mortality rates have made life expectancy at Pine Ridge the nation’s shortest. Further reading: Evans, Sterling, ed. American Indians in American History, 1870–2001: A Companion Reader. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002; Iverson, Peter. We Are Still Here: American Indians in the Twentieth Century. Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1998. Marsha E. Ackermann
Angola, Republic of The Republic of Angola is situated in south-central Africa. The country is bounded by the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the northeast, Zambia to the east, Namibia to the south, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. It has an area of 1,246,700 square kilometers and its capital city is Luanda. It is divided into 18 provinces,
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ANZUS Treaty
but one of them, Cabinda, is an enclave, separated from the rest of the country by the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The topography varies from arid coastal areas and dry savannas in the interior south to rain forests in the north and a wet interior highland. On the plateau, heavy rainfall causes periodic flooding. Overuse and degradation of water resources have led to inadequate supplies of potable water. Other current environmental issues are deforestation of the tropical rain forest, overuse of pastures, soil erosion, and desertification, which results in a loss of biodiversity. Angola had approximately 12,127,071 inhabitants in 2006. There were around 90 ethnic groups in the country, and although Portuguese was the official language, Bantu and other African languages were spoken by a high percentage of the population. Although Roman Catholicism remained the dominant religion, there were evangelist and indigenous religions that were very strong. Angola’s socioeconomic conditions rank in the bottom 10 in the world. Health conditions are inadequate because of years of insurgency. There is a high prevalence of HIV, vectorborne diseases like malaria, and other waterborne diseases. Although the agricultural sector was formerly the mainstay of the economy, it contributed only a small percentage of GDP, because of the disruption caused by civil war. The products derived from this sector are bananas, sugarcane, coffee, sisal, corn, cotton, manioc (tapioca), tobacco, vegetables, and plantains. It also has forest products and fish. Food must be imported in large quantities. Angola is one of Africa’s major oil producers. The oil industry is the most important sector of the economy and it constitutes the majority of the country’s exports. Angola has minerals: diamonds, iron, uranium, phosphates, feldspar, bauxite, and gold. But Angola is classified as one of the world’s poorest countries despite abundant natural resources. The reasons lie in the history of this country, which has suffered a 27-year civil war that was caused not only by ethnic factors but also by disputes over natural resources. Angola was a Portuguese colony. In the 1960s liber ation movements such as Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA) began to call for independence. In 1961 the native Angolans rose in a revolt that was repressed. In 1964 a group inside of the FNLA separated and created the National Union for Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). During the mid1960s and 1970s there were a series of guerrilla actions,
which finished with the negotiation for independence in 1975. But the postindependence period was distinguished by instability. The MPLA declared itself the government of the country so soon after independence that a civil war broke out between MPLA, UNITA, and FNLA, exacerbated by foreign intervention during the cold war. Angola, like many African countries, became involved in the struggle between the superpowers and many African political leaders resorted to U.S. or Soviet aid. The MPLA government received large amounts of aid from Cuba and the Soviet Union, while the United States supported first the FNLA and then UNITA. In 1976 the FNLA was defeated by Cuban troops, leaving the competition for government control and access to natural resources to MPLA and UNITA. By the end of the cold war era, in 1991, a cease-fire was signed between the government and UNITA and both agreed to make Angola a multiparty state and called for elections. In 1992 the MPLA was elected to lead the nation but UNITA disagreed and charged MPLA with fraud. This situation caused tensions and the war continued until 1994, when negotiations began, helped by South Africa and the United Nations (UN). The war finished in 2002 when Jonas Savimbi, the president of UNITA, was killed in battle. As a result of the civil war, up to 1.5 million lives were lost and 4 million people were displaced. Since the war Angola has been slowly rebuilding, increasing foreign exchange and implementing reforms recommended by the International Monetary Fund. Further reading: Abbot, Peter, and Manuel Rodrigues. Modern African Wars (2): Angola and Mocamgique 1961–1974. Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 1988; Campbell, Horace. Militarism, Warfare, and the Search for Peace in Angola. In The Uncertain Promise of Southern Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001; Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Klare, Michael T. “The New Geography of Conflict.” Foreign Affairs (May/June 2001); Klare, Michael T. Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict. New York: Henry Holt, 2001. Verónica M. Ziliotto
ANZUS Treaty The ANZUS Security Treaty binds together Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. ANZUS was signed in San Francisco on September 1, 1951, and
took effect on April 28, 1952. It remains in force, although it has increasingly come under attack by both Australia and New Zealand since the 1980s and New Zealand has essentially withdrawn from the alliance. Beginning in the late 1940s the United States abandoned the isolationist impulse that had directed its foreign policy in previous decades to form and maintain a global network of alliances. U.S. policy makers in the cold war were especially interested in opposing the rise of communism. Following the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, the United States became concerned with constructing a series of regional security arrangements to guard against communist attacks. For Australia and New Zealand, alliances were a necessity because of their need for protection, particularly from Communist China, the Soviet Union, and due to the problems associated with decolonization in Asia and the Pacific. Both countries were also concerned about the return of Japan to sovereign status, and sought a replacement for Great Britain as a dependable security guarantor. The United States offered exactly what both sought. The ANZUS Treaty stipulates that an armed attack on New Zealand, Australia, or the United States would be dangerous to each signatory’s own peace and safety. Accordingly, each country would act to meet the common danger in step with its constitutional processes. In the early and mid-1950s the United States rejected Australian efforts to move toward more security cooperation such as cooperative and systematic military planning and the designation of national security units that might fall under the ANZUS name and assignment, similar to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) model. After the ANZUS pact was signed, nonsecurity ties between the three countries grew, paralleling the building of their security relations. Commercial, cultural, and other forms of U.S. influence were largely welcomed during the cold war years. The great disparity of size and power generated irritation within Australia and New Zealand, however, and both countries complained about the way they were treated by the United States, although both developed close military cooperation with the United States. Australia, in particular, became a valuable site for U.S. communication and surveillance facilities and naval ship visits. As the cold war began to wind down in the 1980s, the threat from outside sources lessened. Citizens of the two nations, particularly among members of the labor, began to question the elaborate security ties with the United States. Citizens of New Zealand and Australia
appropriate technology
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challenged ANZUS as more a method for the United States to enlist support for its military agenda than a means of providing security for them. In 1984 New Zealand banned the entry of U.S. Navy ships into its ports in the belief that the ships were carrying nuclear weapons or were nuclear powered. The United States argued that New Zealand’s action compromised U.S. military operations. Additionally, Americans were offended by the manner in which New Zealand presented its differences with U.S. policy makers. When President Ronald Reagan announced in 1986 that the United States would decline to abide by the provisions of the unratified Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) II that restricted nuclear weapons, New Zealand stated that the United States had not been negotiating in good faith. The United States responded by rescinding its ANZUS-based security obligations toward New Zealand in 1986. The future of ANZUS is in doubt. New Zealand has shown no indication that it wants to resume the partnership. For Australia, the alliance with the United States has continued to be a foundation of its defense policy. See also South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). Further reading: Albinski, Henry S. ANZUS: The United States and Pacific Security. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1987; McIntyre, W. David. Background to the ANZUS Pact: Policy-Making, Strategy, and Diplomacy, 1945–55. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995; Young, Thomas-Durell. Australia, New Zealand, and U.S. Security Relations, 1951–1986. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992. Caryn E. Neumann
appropriate technology Appropriate technology is an approach of using environmentally conscious, cost-effective, small projects rather than high technology and huge expensive projects to improve the lives of people around the world. Mohandas K. Gandhi was an early advocate of appropriate technology use, arguing that the massive Indian population could not afford the waste and expense involved with many development projects advocated in the West. Gunnar (d. 1987) and Alva Myrdal (d. 1986), an economist and a diplomat from Sweden, also supported the use of appropriate technology in
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Third World or Global South development projects. In Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations and the Challenge of World Poverty: A World AntiPoverty Outline, Gunnar Myrdal focused on ways to break out of the cycle of poverty whereby low productivity led to low income that in turn contributed to low savings and low capital. A number of countries and individual development experts have successfully utilized appropriate technology. In the poor West African nation of Burkina Faso numbers of young people were given short training courses in administering shots; they then went out to rural centers in the countryside, where they gave shots to children. Thus at low cost the nation’s children were inoculated for the five major childhood diseases. The Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy (d. 1989) attempted to solve the problem of providing low-cost housing by using cheap mud brick that was easily available and aesthetically pleasing. After World War II he built an experimental village, Gourna, in southern Egypt, entirely of mud brick structures; unfortunately the project was mired in bureaucratic and political problems, and Fathy’s approach was only adopted by some artists in Egypt and wealthy Americans in the Southwest. In 1977 Wangari Muta Maathai of Kenya initiated the Green Belt movement, in which women were mobilized to reforest degraded land; she also fought for the cancellation of African debt and an end to political corruption. Her work for the environment was recognized with the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize. In another small but successful project pest-resistant grasses were planted around crops to increase productivity and the grasses were fed to livestock, increasing profits from both crops. In the field of health care President Carter’s center in Atlanta, Georgia, aimed to eliminate guinea worm disease, which afflicted many poor people, especially in western Africa. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the richest private philanthropic organization, established programs to raise vaccination rates and eliminate other virulent diseases. In Asia microfinance projects such as the Grameen Bank provided loans for poor women (who had a more reliable rate of repayment than men) for start-up money for small businesses or the purchase of farm animals such as chickens, goats, and cows that provided muchneeded income and protein to supplement meager diets. Until late in the 20th century the World Bank and other aid organizations tended to fund high-tech projects such as dams, factories, or roads. Toward the end of the century agencies shifted their priorities but, politi-
cians preferred larger, more visible projects with investment from the top rather than on the grassroots level. Although advocates of appropriate technology and environmentalists argued that bigger was not always better, that it was not necessary to build the world’s highest skyscraper or biggest dam, nations as diverse as Egypt, Turkey, and China went ahead with the huge Aswa¯n Dam, Atatürk Dam, and Three Gorges Dam, and others continued the construction of environmentally damaging projects. See also Third World/Global South. Further reading: Fathy, Hassan. Natural Energy and Vernacular Architecture: Principles and Examples with Reference to Hot Arid Climates. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press for The United Nations University, 1986; Sachs, Jeffrey. The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time. London: Penguin Press, 2005; Tenner, Edward. Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of the Unintended Consequences. New York: Vintage Books, 1997. Janice J. Terry
Arab-Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations Five major wars and numerous peace negotiations have failed to resolve the ongoing conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians over land and statehood. Israel declared its independence and won the first war against opposing Arab states and the Palestinians in 1948. The 1949 armistice mediated by Ralph Bunche, a U.S. diplomat to the United Nations, ended the hostilities but did not result in an actual peace treaty, and technically a state of war still existed. Although the Arab states refused to recognize Israel, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt supported behind-the-scenes secret negotiations in the early 1950s, but when Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion demanded face-to-face negotiations, the diplomatic efforts failed. After the 1956 war, the United Nations, with Egypt’s agreement, placed peacekeeping forces in the Sinai Peninsula (Egyptian territory) at strategic locations along the borders between Israel and Egypt. Their removal at Egypt’s request was the ostensible cause of the 1967 war in which Israel decisively defeated the surrounding Arab nations and occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights (Syrian territory), and the Sinai Peninsula (Egyptian territory). Following this major victory, Israel expected the Arabs to
sue for peace and that some border modifications would be made. However, the Arabs refused to negotiate until Israel had withdrawn from all the territory occupied in the 1967 war and that some resolution of the Palestinian refugee issue and demands for self-determination had been achieved. Following the 1967 war, the Palestinians concluded that only armed struggle against Israel would achieve their national aspirations, and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) emerged as their sole political and military representative. Israel and its U.S. ally both considered the PLO a terrorist organization and refused to negotiate with it. Various diplomatic settlements were suggested but all failed to break the impasse. shuttle diplomacy To regain the Sinai and to bring the United States in as a mediator to the dispute, Anwar Sadat of Egypt launched a surprise attack against the Israeli forces occupying Sinai in 1973. Although Israel suffered some initial defeats, its military soon recovered and regained the offensive. With U.S. and UN diplomacy, a cease-fire was declared, and both sides announced they had won the war. The U.S. secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, then embarked on shuttle diplomacy between Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Israel in an attempt to reach a settlement to the conflict. He envisioned a step-by-step process that the U.S. would control. As a result, various phased withdrawals of Israeli forces from the Sinai were agreed upon and were to be guaranteed by U.S. forces stationed in the peninsula, but the overall cause of the conflict, namely the conflicting claims of Israel and the Palestinians, remained unresolved. Sadat attempted to revive the process by making a dramatic visit to Israel, where he spoke before the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in 1977. Sadat was the first Arab leader publicly to visit Israel, and his gesture altered the psychological dimensions of the conflict and made it appear that peace between the Arabs and Israel was possible. In 1978 the U.S. president Jimmy Carter brought Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and Sadat together for 13 days of occasionally acrimonious negotiations at Camp David. These negotiations led to the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel that was signed at a well-publicized ceremony hosted by Carter on the White House lawn in 1979. The treaty provided for the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Sinai and full diplomatic recognition between the two states. Carter anticipated that further negotiations to resolve the differences between Israel and the Palestinians, the cessation of Israeli settlements in the
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Occupied Territories, and the return of some land for an overall peace settlement would follow. The Arab states and the Palestinians rejected the treaty because it did not resolve most of the basic issues, and Israel continued to build settlements in the territories, further angering the Palestinians. In 1981 Egyptian Islamists who opposed the treaty assassinated Sadat; however, his successor, Hosni Mubarak, maintained the treaty in what has been called a “cold peace” between Egypt and Israel. In 1984 a full peace treaty between Israel and Jordan under King Hussein was signed. Hussein and then Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, both military officers, had a cordial relationship, and this treaty has also held. During the 1970s the PLO also gained recognition from a number of nations around the world. In spite of Israel’s opposition, Yasir Arafat even addressed the UN General Assembly in New York City. Israel attempted to eliminate the PLO by attacking its power base in Lebanon in 1982. The war seriously damaged the PLO infrastructure but did not destroy the organization that, with international assent, moved its base of operations to Tunisia. UN peace-keeping forces remained in southern Lebanon along the Israeli border, but a new indigenous Lebanese Islamist movement, Hizbollah, then began attacks on Israeli forces both in Lebanon and Israel. As early as 1974 the PLO hinted at the acceptance of a two state solution, or the so-called Palestinian ministate comprising East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, occupied by Israel in the 1967 war. The Arab governments also made gestures regarding acceptance of Israel; the Fahd Plan of 1982, sponsored by Saudi Arabia, called for all the states in the region to live in peace. The Fez Plan of 1982 reiterated the Arab states’ willingness to consider trading land for peace as long as some form of Palestinian self-determination was achieved. These overtures were largely ignored by both Israel and its major ally, the United States, although the United States did have some secret contacts with the PLO. After 1988, when the PLO and Arafat agreed to recognize Israel’s right to exist, to recognize UN Resolution 242, and to renounce terrorism, the United States agreed publicly to negotiate with it as the representative of the Palestinians. The PLO and Arafat were further weakened by their support for Saddam Hussein during the First Gulf War; in retaliation the Gulf States, especially Kuwait, halted financial support for the PLO, and Kuwait ousted tens of thousands of Palestinians who then generally took refugee in Jordan. With the collapse of the Soviet Union the PLO also lost a key ally. With the end of the
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cold war, the United States became the major mediator in the long-running dispute. In 1991 U.S. Secretary of State James Baker succeeded in bringing all of the parties to the conflict—Jordanians, Syrians, Israelis, and Palestinians—together for the first time for direct negotiations. The Palestinians were represented by a delegation from the Occupied Territories who unofficially represented the PLO. The Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir of Likud, the hard-line Right party, was a reluctant participant, and the negotiations dragged on without appreciable progress until 1993. direct negotiations At the same time, in 1993 the new Israeli Labor Party government under Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres agreed to direct negotiations with PLO representatives. These top secret talks were held in Norway, a respected neutral party, and resulted in the first Oslo Accords. The accords included the Declaration of Principles (DOP) and letters of mutual recognition that were publicly signed in September 1993 on the White House lawn with President Bill Clinton as host. The occasion culminated with a famous handshake between the two old enemies, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat. Under Oslo I, Israel agreed to withdraw from Jericho and most of the Gaza Strip, and a five-year process of negotiations for further withdrawals was to result in the creation of what the Palestinians believed would be an independent Palestinian state. The PLO was to maintain order in its territories and prevent attacks on Israelis. The territories were then turned over to the Pales tine Authority under the PLO. In 1994 a Jewish settler massacred Palestinian worshippers in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron; and Hamas, the main Palestinian Islamist group, retaliated with a car bomb in Israel that killed Israeli civilians. Arafat condemned suicide attacks, but they continued. Meanwhile, the PA was also charged with corruption and inefficiency and lost much popular support among the Palestinians. Under Oslo II in 1995, Israel began a phased withdrawal from Ramallah, Nablus, and Bethlehem on the West Bank. However, the issues of Israeli settlements, the final status of Jerusalem, and the refugees remained undecided. Militants on both sides opposed these agreements, and in 1995 an Israeli radical assassinated Rabin. Meanwhile, violence in the territories continued. None of these negotiations settled the dispute between Israel and Syria regarding the Golan Heights. The Likud, under Binyamin Netanyahu, won the elections following Rabin’s death, and once again the
negotiations stalled. Israel withdrew from Hebron in 1997, one year past the agreed upon time frame. In the Wye Memorandum of 1998 (named after the Wye Plantation in Maryland where the talks were held) the United States mediated further Israeli withdrawals, and Arafat pledged to combat terrorism and to take steps to ensure further Israeli security. However, Netanyahu’s government collapsed owing to mounting opposition from within his own party, and the withdrawals were delayed. Thus the expected deadline of 1999 passed without the establishment of a viable independent Palestinian state on the 22 percent of historic Palestine proposed for it. In addition, new Jewish settlements continued to be built or enlarged within the territories still held by Israel. In a popular move within Israel, Prime Minister Ehud Barak withdrew Israeli troops from southern Lebanon in spring 2000. In the summer Barak met with President Clinton and Arafat at Camp David. At Camp David Barak presented an offer for a final settlement that involved the Israeli withdrawal from much of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip; Israeli control over the airspace, water aquifers and all of Jerusalem; the denial of the right of return of Palestinian refugees; and the continuation of some of the settlements. Although Clinton pressured Arafat to accept the proposal, Arafat knew he could not agree to give up the right of return and some Palestinian control over East Jerusalem, particularly the holy site of Haram al-Sharif, and survive politically. He rejected the offer but failed or refused to present a counter offer, and the talks failed. Shortly thereafter a Palestinian uprising, the alAqsa Intifada, broke out. As the violence mounted, many Israelis lost confidence in the peace process and Barak. A last attempt to revive the process was made at Taba (in the Sinai Peninsula close to the Israeli border) in January 2001. Under the Taba proposals, Israeli would retain about 6 percent of the West Bank, reduce the number of settlements, and the Palestinians would receive a state. But the two sides could not agree on the status of Jerusalem, the right of return, or the Israeli settlement near Jericho that effectively split the Palestinian West Bank into two parts. The Likud Party under Ariel Sharon won the ensuing Israeli elections, and Sharon became the new prime minister in 2001; he supported the crushing of the al-Aqsa uprising by military means. The Arab states adopted the Saudi peace initiative whereby they would recognize Israeli in exchange for the creation of a Palestinian state in the territories in 2002. In 2003 some former Israeli officials and leading PLO
members proposed the Geneva Plan. Rather than adopting the step-by-step process that had not succeeded, this plan was a full comprehensive agreement, in which the end game was known. The plan provided for a Palestinian state in most of the West Bank and all of the Gaza Strip and Israeli control over three settlement blocs in the West Bank and around Jerusalem. Palestinians would control the Haram al-Sharif in East Jerusalem, and Jews would control the Wailing Wall. The refugees would receive some compensation and the freedom to return to the Palestinian state. Provisions were made for mediation of disputes, and the Palestinians were to have a security force, not an army. Israel would keep two monitoring posts as an early warning system on the West Bank for no more than 15 years. Sharon rejected the plan although it received some muted political support within Israel. Arafat did not give full assent for the plan but did not openly reject it. Nor did other states, especially the United States, adopt the plan, and it died for want of support. Sharon and his successor, Ehud Olmert, adopted a policy of unilateral disengagement whereby Israel made decisions without negotiations or discussions with the Palestinians. Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip and dismantled the settlements, but periodically launched military attacks into the territory and retained control over its borders, thereby cutting it off from trade and outside support. The Bush administration’s support for Israel and Sharon lessened the credibility of the U.S. as a neutral mediator to the dispute among Palestinians and other Arabs. After Hamas won the Palestinian elections in 2006 negotiations broke down entirely. Although Hamas suggested implementing a long-term cease-fire, it refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist. Israel considered Hamas, which continued suicide bomb attacks against Israelis within the territories and Israel proper, a terrorist organization and rejected all negotiations with it. As the peace process dragged on, a generation of disillusioned and angry Palestinians grew up under Israeli military occupation. Conversely, many Israelis knew the Palestinians only as suicide bombers or violent opponents. See also Arab-Israeli War (1967); Arab-Israeli War (1973); Arab-Israeli War (1982). Further reading: Ben-Ami, Shlomo. Scars of War, Wounds of Peace. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006; Gelvin, James L. The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005; Sher,
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Gilead. The Israeli-Palestinian Peace Negotiations. 1999– 2001 London: Rutledge, 2005. Janice J. Terry
Arab-Israeli War (1956) The nationalization of the Suez Canal was the ostensible cause for the 1956 Arab-Israeli War. After the United States refused aid for building the Aswa¯ n Dam on July 26, the anniversary of the 1952 revolution, Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal to finance building of the dam, Nasser’s dream project. Egypt managed to keep the canal running, much to the consternation of France and Britain. In announcing the canal’s nationalization, Nasser had carefully adhered to international law. The United States, especially the secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, an expert in international law, opposed the use of force to retake the canal and instead proposed a diplomatic settlement. The oil shipped through the canal was vital to the British and French economies, and it was apparent that the United States, then self-sufficient in oil, did not intend to supplement any possible oil losses to its European allies. Great Britain and France were determined to take back the canal by force. The British prime minister, Anthony Eden, personally detested Nasser, and his conservative Tory government was reluctant to cede British imperial control. The French were angry over Nasser’s support for the Algerians in the ongoing war there. Israelis feared Nasser’s growing popularity in the Arab world and wanted him removed from power before he could unify the Arabs and possibly form a united front to attack them. The Israelis secretly approached the French with a proposal for a joint military action against Egypt; the French then brought Great Britain into the plan. Although some British cabinet members opposed joining the alliance, Eden was determined to bring Nasser’s regime down, and the tripartite agreement of the French, British, and Israelis was concluded. According to the plan Israel was to launch a tripronged attack across the Sinai Peninsula, quickly take the territory, and stop the offensive prior to reaching the canal. The British and French would bombard Egyptian airfields and parachute forces along the canal on the supposed excuse that they were there to stop the war between Egypt and Israel. The Israelis launched the attack in October 1956, quickly
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cut through Egyptian defense lines, took the Sinai, but then stopped before reaching the banks of the canal. The British and French were late in launching their attack but ultimately took control of the canal. The war was a clear-cut military victory for Israel, Britain, and France, but Nasser immediately accused the three nations of collusion. Although Eden and the French for years publicly denied any collusion, ultimately firsthand accounts by Israeli and other military and political leaders revealed the secret agreement. With some justification, Nasser argued that the attack proved that Britain and France still had imperialist designs on the Arab world and that Israel was also a threat to its Arab neighbors. Nasser thus turned a military defeat into a political victory and became the most popular man in the Arab world. Contrary to Western and Israeli hopes, Nasser was not overthrown, and he consolidated power after the 1956 war. The war placed the United States in the awkward position of having to condemn its closest allies in the United Nations. The Soviets gained popularity in the Arab world by supporting Egypt. The war also diverted world attention away from the brutal suppression of the 1956 Hungarian revolt by Soviet forces. In the face of international condemnation, Britain and France were forced to withdraw in December 1956, and the canal reverted to Egyptian control. Subsequently Eden, suffering from ill health in part brought on by the stress of the conflict, stepped down as prime minister. The Israelis were reluctant to withdraw from the strategic area of Sharm al-Sheikh in the south of Sinai and the Gaza Strip. President Eisenhower intervened and threatened to cut off all U.S. economic aid if they did not return all the territories to Egypt. Israeli forces finally left in March 1957. However, Israel did gain a unilateral agreement from the United States that the Gulf of Aqaba up to the southern Israeli port of Elath was to be considered an international waterway. Egypt and the Arab states never recognized the legality of Aqaba as an international waterway but for a decade did not challenge Israeli shipping through the gulf. Israel made it clear that any future closure of the waterway would be casus belli, or cause for war, and its threatened closure was one cause of the 1967 ArabIsraeli War. See also Algerian revolution. Further reading: Dayan, Moshe. Diary of the Sinai Campaign. New York: Schocken Books, 1967; Eden, Anthony. The Suez Crisis of 1956. Boston: Beacon Press, 1960; Neff, Donald. Warriors at Suez. New York: The Linden Press, 1981; Nut-
ting, Anthony. No End of a Lesson: The Story of Suez. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1967. Janice J. Terry
Arab-Israeli War (1967) The 1967 Arab-Israeli War lasted six days and was a resounding military victory for Israel but failed to achieve a resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. In 1966 border incidents and incursions into Israel by Fatah Palestinian guerrilla fighters increased, and Israeli launched a major military raid into Jordan in the fall of 1966. In spring 1967 the Israeli prime minister, Levi Eshkol—a dove by Israeli political standards—responded to demands for a stronger stance against Arab provocations by agreeing to the cultivation of demilitarized zones along the border with Syria. Predictably Syria opened fire, and Israel retaliated by shooting down a number of Syrian jet fighters. The Syrians, presumably encouraged by their Soviet allies, believed they were about to be attacked by Israel and appealed to their ally Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt for help. In an attempt to gain diplomatic support and to look like he was doing something for his Arab allies, on May 16 Nasser asked that the UN withdraw its peacekeeping troops from the frontier posts in the Sinai Peninsula. Nasser mistakenly believed that a protracted period of negotiations would follow; however, according to the UN Charter troops could only be placed in a territory at the invitation of the host country. Consequently, the UN secretary-general U Thant promptly acceded to the Egyptian request and ordered the withdrawal of the peacekeeping force. Egyptian units occupied the posts including the vital Sharm al-Sheikh position along the Gulf of Aqaba, on May 21. Nasser then gave conflicting statements as to whether the waterway would be closed to shipping going to the southern Israeli port of Elath. After the 1956 Arab-Israeli War, Israel had announced that it would view any closure of the waterway as casus belli, or cause for war. On May 23 U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson publicly announced that the United States considered the waterway an international one, thereby supporting the Israeli position. Eshkol advised caution in an attempt to avoid full-scale war, but military leaders and hawks in Israel favored immediate action. A flurry of diplomatic activity ensued, with Nasser seeing UN and U.S. representatives in Cairo and Abba Eban of Israel touring the Great Powers to secure their support in the event of
war. The Soviets feared a full-scale war that might escalate into a confrontation between the superpowers and used the hotline to Washington to prevent either power from becoming directly involved. After receiving notes from both Johnson and the Soviets urging calm, Eskhol convinced most of the Israeli cabinet ministers on May 28 that all diplomatic measures should be used before recourse to war. However, irresponsible rhetoric by Arab leaders inflamed fears among Israelis that they were about to be overrun by Arab forces and also convinced Arabs that their militaries would win any war with Israel. Although the CIA and other experts predicted that Israel, with its military superiority, would quickly win any war with its Arab neighbors, the general public in the West, especially in the United States, was also convinced that Israel was in peril. On May 30 Egypt and Jordan joined in a joint defense pact, and the PLO was allowed to open offices in Jordan. Iraq also joined the pact. Nasser was approached by both the Soviets and the United States urging a diplomatic settlement and apparently believed that Israel would not attack as long as diplomatic negotiations were in process. On May 31 General Moshe Dayan, a noted hawk, became the Israeli defense minister, and war seemed likely. On June 5 the Israeli air force launched surprise attacks against Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Syria. Within two hours over 400 Arab planes had been destroyed, almost all on the ground. In spite of the boasts by Arab leaders, their militaries had not been prepared for war. With total air superiority Israel launched a threepronged attack (almost a repeat of the military action in the 1956 war) and easily cut through the Egyptian forces, taking the Gaza Strip (administered by Egypt) and also moved across Sinai to the east bank of the Suez Canal. On June 8 Israel and Egypt agreed to a ceasefire in the Sinai. On June 5 Israeli forces also moved against Jordanian forces in the West Bank, taking all of the West Bank and East Jerusalem by June 7. Over 100,000 more Palestinians became refugees as thousands fled across the Jordan River to escape the war. On June 27 the Knesset agreed to a proclamation that Jerusalem was one city. On June 8 Israeli forces moved against Syria in the north while the UN was still negotiating a cease-fire. In a still unexplained attack, Israel, on the same day, torpedoed the USS Liberty, a spy ship deployed in the eastern Mediterranean. By June 9 Israel had taken the Golan Heights from Syria, and a cease-fire was agreed to on June 10.
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Taking responsibility for the disastrous defeat, Nasser resigned on June 9 but was brought back to power by popular acclaim. In support of their Arab allies the Soviet bloc severed diplomatic relations with Israel in the following days. In the war, the Arabs suffered over 26,000 killed, wounded, captured, or missing and lost over 1,200 tanks. Israel lost 6,000 killed, wounded, captured, or missing; 100 tanks; and 40 airplanes. UN Resolution 242 called for the return of territories taken in war but pointedly did not specify all of the territories; this would become a point of contention in future negotiations. The war had been a humiliating loss for the Arab states. Owing to its decisive victory, Israel expected a full settlement, but no Arab government could hope to survive if it accepted an agreement with Israel that did not provide for the return of the newly conquered territory and the recognition of some form of Palestinian state. The impacts of the war were far-reaching and continue to reverberate in the region to the present day. After the war, Israel announced that it would only accept face-to-face negotiations with the Arabs. From June 14 to 16, Arab leaders met at Khartoum, Sudan, and forged a united front. They announced that there would be no negotiations with Israel until it withdrew from the Occupied Territories and that no separate peace would be made by any individual Arab state. This caused Egypt’s ostracism from the Arab world following Sadat’s unilateral peace treaty with Israel in 1979. As a consequence of the impasse, Israel continued to occupy all of the Sinai Peninsula (Egyptian territory), the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights (Syrian territory). The Soviets rearmed Egypt and Syria and increased their presence in the region. From 1968 to 1970 Nasser waged a war of attrition along the canal, and the Israelis built what they believed to be an impregnable defense line on the east bank of the canal. The line was breached by an Egyptian offensive in the 1973 ArabIsraeli War. Initially Israel was probably willing to return most of the Occupied Territories in exchange for a full peace and recognition by the Arab states. The longer Israel held the territories and the more Israeli settlements were established, the less land it was willing to trade for peace. As a result of the war Palestinians concluded that the Arab governments would not be able to achieve their goal of an independent Palestinian state and that they would have to rely on themselves. This directly contributed to the growth of the Palestine Liberation
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Organization (PLO) as the sole representative of the Palestinian people. It also set the stage for a cycle of violence between Palestinian and Israeli forces that continued into the 21st century. Further reading: Dayan, Moshe. Story of My Life. New York: Morrow, 1976; Ennis, James J., Jr. Assault on the Liberty: The True Story of the Israeli Attack on an American Intelligence Ship. New York: Random House, 1980; Herzog, Chaim. The Arab-Israeli Wars: War and Peace in the Middle East. New York: Vintage, 1984; Laqueur, Walter. The Road to War: The Origins and Aftermath of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1967– 68. London: Penguin Books, 1969; Neff, Donald. Warriors for Jerusalem: The Six Days that Changed the Middle East. New York: Linden Press/Simon and Schuster, 1984. Janice J. Terry
Arab-Israeli War (1973) The 1973 Arab-Israeli War (October 6–26), known as the Yom Kippur War in Israel and the Ramadan War among Arabs, was the fourth major military conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors. During the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Israel occupied Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian-Palestinian territories; despite international efforts by U.S. secretary of state William Rogers and UN special envoy Gunnar Jarring, no peace agreement was reached, and Israel continued to occupy the territories taken in 1967. Although in March 1972 Syrian president Hafez al-Assad publicly expressed his readiness to accept UN Resolution 242 recognizing Israel with the return of all of the Syrian Golan Heights, Israeli policy remained unchanged. Syria and Egypt, with the support of Saudi Arabia, therefore decided to initiate a limited war in order to break the political stalemate. The Egyptian president, Anwar el-Sadat, was also anxious to relieve domestic discontent and to force the Soviet Union to supply Egypt with more advanced weaponry. It appears that Sadat and al-Assad began the secret planning of a joint strategy in 1971 and by the end of the year had reached an agreement on a broad strategy of action. In August 1973 the Egyptian chief of staff, Lieutenant General Saad el-Shazly, and his Syrian counterpart, Yusuf Shakkur, formally agreed on two possible dates for the war: September 7–11 or October 5–10. Less than a week later Egypt and Syria agreed on October 6. At the time, in spite of Arab military preparations, Israeli military
intelligence did not believe that war was imminent. The possibility of Israel’s being taken by surprise was not seriously considered, nor was the thought accepted as valid that Arabs might launch a limited war to force serious political negotiations. The Egyptian and Syrian attack on October 6 was therefore an unpleasant and shocking surprise for Israel. Hostilities began when the Syrians attacked the Golan Heights and the Egyptian army surprised Israel by crossing the Suez Canal on a pontoon bridge and by breaching the supposedly impregnable Israeli Bar Lev Defense Line in Sinai. Syrian armored and infantry divisions stormed the Golan plateau but were stopped several miles from the eastern shore of Lake Tiberias and the River Jordan. On October 8 the Israeli defense minister, Moshe Dayan, ordered the deployment of Israeli nuclear weapons, fearing that the “third temple” (the state of Israel) might be in danger. His fears proved premature; the Israeli army regained the initiative, and General Ariel Sharon launched a counteroffensive and established a bridgehead on the east bank of the Suez Canal, only 60 miles from Cairo. A cease-fire was agreed upon on October 24. The situation was similar in the north, where Syrian advances on the Golan were reversed, and the outskirts of Damascus came into range of Israeli artillery. Three major factors enabled the Israeli forces to reverse their initial losses. First, once the superior Israeli military forces had been fully mobilized they retook initiatives on both fronts. Second, a crucial role was played by an enormous airlift of U.S. military supplies. The airlift, larger than the Berlin airlift, provided Israel with some 24,000 tons of arms, ammunition, tanks, missiles, and howitzers. A third and crucial factor was the differing political and strategic goals of Sadat and al-Assad. Sadat had started a limited war to shatter the status quo and pressure the United States to mediate the dispute in order to regain the Sinai Peninsula. Assad wanted to retake the entire Golan and put pressure on Israel to give up the occupied Palestinian territories. After two days of successful advances, the Egyptian forces were ordered to adopt a defensive stance by Sadat, but, in reaction to Syrian setbacks in the north and the U.S. airlift, Egyptian forces reinitiated the attack against Israel on October 14. However, they failed to regain the initiative. The Soviet Union was reluctant to become further involved, and U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissin ger’s skillful diplomacy resulted in a political gain for
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the United States and the drawing closer together of the United States and Sadat. On October 22 the UN Security Council passed Resolution 338 calling on “all parties to the present fighting to cease all firing and terminate all military activity . . . to start immediately after the cease-fire the implementation of the Security Council Resolution 242 in all of its parts aimed at establishing just and durable peace in the Middle East.” Sadat accepted the cease-fire, and Syria officially recognized it on October 23. Israel continued its military action against Egypt, however, and on the evening of October 23 Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev sent a letter to U.S. president Richard Nixon proposing joint U.S.-Soviet intervention to ensure the cease-fire. He also threatened that if the United States did not take action, the Soviet Union would be faced with the urgent necessity to “consider taking appropriate steps unilaterally.” In response Kissinger put U.S. forces on full nuclear alert on October 24. The Soviets did not intervene and over the next few days the cease-fire was implemented. Although Israel proved victorious in the end, the war had been a great shock to the state. For the Arabs, the war was a limited success and seemed to rehabilitate the Egyptian army after its disastrous defeat in the 1967 war. In May 1974 Syria and Israel reached a disengagement agreement, and Israel agreed to withdraw from parts of the Golan and the town of Quneitra but continued to occupy the rest of the Golan. Assad’s achievements improved his image in Syria. The war also increased U.S. power and weakened Soviet influence in the region. The United States subsequently mediated negotiations between Egypt and Israel, leading toward the Camp David accords and the EgyptianIsraeli peace treaty in 1979. See also Arab-Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations; Berlin blockade/airlift. Further reading: Heikal, Mohamed. The Road to Ramadan. London: Collins, 1975; Quandt, William B. Peace Process: American Diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli Conflict since 1967. Rev. ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001; Sachar, Howard Morley. A History of Israel, Vol. II: From the Aftermath of the Yom Kippur War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987; Shazly, Saad El. The Crossing of the Suez. San Francisco, CA: American Mideast Research, 1980. Andrej Kreutz
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Arab-Israeli War (1982) In 1982 Israel invaded Lebanon in an attempt to eliminate the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) once and for all. In 1970, following Black September, when Palestinian forces were defeated in Jordan, the PLO moved its base of operations to Lebanon. The presence of large numbers of Palestinians further disrupted the fragile Lebanese political system, which was based on a confessional system reflecting the many different religious communities in the country. When the PLO launched attacks from southern Lebanon, Israel often retaliated by attacking Lebanon and demanding that Lebanon control the PLO. Some Lebanese, particularly the Maronite Christians who held the preponderance of political power, blamed the PLO for the problems with Israel and for Lebanon’s domestic instability. They also wanted the PLO out of the country. After civil war broke out in Lebanon in 1975 the central government ceased to be effective, and the PLO was able to establish a state within a state. Although the PLO was not the major cause for the civil war— internal political contradictions in Lebanon were—it was a contributing factor. Initially the PLO attempted to remain neutral in the war, but as violence throughout the country escalated, it was drawn into the fighting on the side of the Sunni Muslims, who, unlike other groups in Lebanon, largely lacked their own military militias. The PLO also provided social services and militarily trained some Shi’i in the south, who traditionally had been the poorest and least powerful group in the country. However, PLO fighters were often arrogant, and gradually Shi’i communities came to resent their presence. Following increased attacks by the PLO, including terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians in the north, Israel occupied southern Lebanon for 120 straight days in 1978. During this time Israel trained and financed a surrogate force, the South Lebanon Army (SLA), commanded by a former officer of the Lebanese army. It continued to operate as a pro-Israeli force in South Lebanon into the 1990s. The Israeli attacks depopulated much of South Lebanon, as over 200,000 people, mostly Shi’i villagers, fled to South Beirut, where they settled in slum areas and refugee camps. During the Lebanese civil war Israel also established direct ties with Maronite Christian forces, the Phalange or Kataeb, led by Bashir Gemayel, who was intent on removing the Palestinians from Lebanon and establishing Maronite control over the government.
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Arafat, Yasir (Yasser Arafat)
By 1982 the PLO feared a major Israeli attack in Lebanon and moderated its incursions across the border. But the hard-line Likud government, under Prime Minister Menachem Begin, was determined to crush the PLO. In June 1982 the Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal organization, whose leader had been condemned to death by Arafat and the PLO, attempted to assassinate the Israeli ambassador, Shlomo Argov, in London. The Israelis retaliated with a full-scale invasion of Lebanon. Although the Israeli cabinet had approved an invasion 25 miles into Lebanon, the hawkish Israeli defense minister and war hero General Ariel Sharon ordered troops that had little difficulty securing the south to advance directly on to Beirut. As the Israelis advanced, the PLO forces also moved north toward Beirut. Within a week Israeli forces had linked up with Bashir Gemayel’s militia in East Beirut and besieged West Beirut, home to about 1 million civilians and also the PLO headquarters. The Israeli air force and navy bombarded the city, and as the siege dragged on, the Israeli military attempted but failed to take the city. The war resulted in a heavy loss of civilian life, and the international community, appalled by the carnage, demanded a cease-fire. Negotiations led to the withdrawal of PLO leaders, including Yasir Arafat and many fighters, to Tunis on August 16. International forces, including French, U.S., and Italian, moved in to protect the civilian population in West Beirut, but within two weeks president Ronald Reagan declared the war over and removed U.S. troops. On August 23 Bashir Gemayel was elected president of Lebanon, but to the dismay of Sharon, he refused to sign a peace treaty with Israel. Several days later Gemayel was killed in his headquarters, and his brother ultimately became the new Lebanese president. In retaliation for the killing—which they blamed on the Palestinians—Lebanese militias, under the observation of Israeli troops, entered the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut, and from September 16 to 18 massacred several thousand people, mostly Palestinian women and children. In Israel major demonstrations against the government erupted for having allowed such attacks. Although Sharon was held accountable for the massacre and forced to resign, he returned to politics and in 2001 became the Israeli prime minister. In the aftermath of the massacre international forces, including U.S. Marines, returned to Lebanon. They, too, were drawn into the Lebanese civil war and became targets for suicide bombers. Thus, even without the presence of the PLO, the war continued.
In 1983 suicide bombers killed 17 Americans and 40 others at the U.S. embassy, 58 French soldiers in a car bomb, and 241 U.S. Marines in a truck bombing at the supposedly safe Beirut airport. When more attacks and kidnappings followed, the international forces withdrew. Israeli forces also gradually withdrew from Beirut but remained in South Lebanon. Lebanon descended into greater anarchy until the civil war ended under the 1989 Taif Agreement, brokered by Saudi Arabia and supported by other Arab states. The 1982 war was a military defeat for the PLO and damaged much of its social and welfare infrastructure in Lebanon, but it did not destroy the organization. Tunisia remained the PLO headquarters until the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords, when it moved to Gaza and Jericho in the West Bank. Initially the Shi’i in South Lebanon welcomed the Israelis but gradually they turned against them when the troops remained. Hizbollah (Party of God), which formed as a result of the 1982 war, became the major Shi’i group to fight against the Israeli occupation. Israel was to sustain more deaths and casualties from the struggle with Hizbollah in Lebanon than from the PLO. In May 2000 Israel pulled out of southern Lebanon except for Shaba Farms claimed by Syria and as Lebanese territory by Hizbollah. However, confrontations between Israeli and Hizbollah forces continued over the disputed area and in 2006 Israel again bombarded and invaded Lebanon, this time in an attempt to destroy Hizbollah. Further reading: Fisk, Robert. Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon. New York: Atheneum, 1990; Jansen, Michael. The Battle of Beirut: Why Israel Invaded Lebanon. Boston: South End Press, 1983; Schiff, Ze’ev, and Ehud Ya’ari. Israel’s Lebanon War. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984. Janice J. Terry
Arafat, Yasir (Yasser Arafat) (1929–2004) Palestinian leader
Yasir Arafat (full name, Muhammad Abdul Rauf Arafat al-Qudwa) was born to Palestinian parents in Cairo in 1929, although he claimed Jerusalem as his birthplace. Educated in Egypt, Arafat earned an engineering degree in 1956. While a student he met other Palestinians, especially Salah Khalaf (1932–91) and Khalil al-Wazir (1935–88), who would become leaders
in the nationalist movement. Although it is not certain that Arafat ever became a full-fledged member, he had contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood, and some of his associates did join the brotherhood. Arafat served as president of the Union of Palestinian Students and, later, the larger General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) from 1952 to 1956. After graduation Arafat, along with several other key allies, moved to Kuwait, where in 1957 he cofounded, with Khalaf and al-Wazir, Fatah (Harakat Tahrir Filastin, or Palestine National Liberation Movement). In Arabic the acronym meant victory. Al-Asifah was its military arm. Wazir’s wife, Intissar, also took an active role in the group. Fatah’s first operation against Israel was an attack on a water pump station in 1965. Along with many other nationalist leaders in the mid-20th century, Arafat and Fatah members were influenced by the Algerian War. On the basis of that struggle they concluded that an independent Palestinian state could only be established through armed struggle with Israel. Arafat’s stated goal was the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in all of historic Palestine. He took the name Abu Ammar as his nom de guerre; al-Wazir became Abu Jihad; and Khalaf became Abu Iyad. The three leaders were known among Arabs as the abus, or fathers. The Battle of Karameh in 1968 was a major turning point for Arafat and Fatah. In an attempt to crush Fatah, Israeli forces moved into Jordan and attacked the Fatah base at Karameh. Surprised when Fatah fighters fought back, the Israelis withdrew somewhat hastily. Young Palestinians and others who had been dispirited after the major defeats in the 1967 ArabIsraeli War then flocked to join Fatah in the struggle against Israel. As a result Fatah became the largest and most powerful of the Palestinian factions and in 1969 Arafat became chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the umbrella organization for a number of diverse Palestinian groups. He served in that capacity until 2004. Under Arafat’s leadership the PLO accommodated political factions on the Left and Right and refused to be aligned with any one Arab government. The mounting power of the PLO posed an open challenge to the Jordanian monarchy. Consequently in September 1970 King Hussein’s forces attacked the PLO forces and Palestinian refugee camps, driving the PLO and Arafat out of Jordan. Black September, the group that subsequently attacked and assassinated Jordanian officials and Israelis, took its name from the war in Jordan. Although Israel and others alleged that Black Sep-
Arafat, Yasir (Yasser Arafat)
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tember and other organizations that engaged in terror attacks were controlled by Arafat, he denied the charges. By 1974 Arafat ordered that PLO attacks be concentrated only in Israel and the Occupied Territories of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. In 1974 Arafat achieved international recognition and spoke before the General Assembly of the United Nations. In subsequent years Arab states and most other countries, with the notable exceptions of Israel and the United States, recognized the PLO as “the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinians.” After being ousted from Jordan, Arafat and the PLO moved the headquarters of their military, political, and social welfare activities to Lebanon. As the central Lebanese government imploded in the course of the civil war in the mid-1970s, the PLO became a state within a state. The PLO infrastructure of schools, hospitals, businesses, and cultural institutions grew. Fearing major Israeli attacks into Lebanon, Arafat attempted to moderate PLO invasions into Israel along Lebanon’s southern borders, but as the PLO’s political and diplomatic efforts became more effective, Israel was determined to eliminate the dangers the PLO posed. In June 1982 Israel launched a full-scale invasion into Lebanon with the purpose of destroying the PLO. Arafat and the PLO were quickly besieged in Beirut, where they held out against massive Israeli bombardments from the sea, land, and air. Negotiations by the international community resulted in the withdrawal of Arafat and the PLO leadership from Lebanon and their relocation to Tunis. Israel attacked PLO headquarters in Tunis in 1985, but Arafat escaped; he also was almost killed in a plane crash in 1992. He and the PLO remained headquartered in Tunisia until 1993. Late in life Arafat married Suha Tawil, from a notable Palestinian Christian family, with whom he had one daughter. His brother Fatih Arafat, a medical doctor, headed the Palestinian Red Crescent for many years. Arafat was a master at maneuvering among the Arab leaders, with whom he often had difficult relations, as well as among conflicting Palestinian factions, often playing one against the other. In 1988 the Palestine National Council (the equivalent of the Palestinian parliament) declared a Palestinian state with Arafat as the president. By this time Arafat supported the so-called ministate solution, whereby the Palestinian state would include the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem, all territory taken by Israel in the 1967 war and occupied by its military forces since that time.
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Arévalo, Juan José
Following secret talks between Israeli and PLO representatives in Norway, Arafat agreed to the 1993 Oslo Accords, which provided for the phased withdrawal of Israeli forces from parts of the Occupied Territories and PLO recognition of Israel. The accords were signed by Arafat and Israeli leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres in a much-publicized ceremony in Washington, D.C. Arafat shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize with Rabin and Peres. Israel withdrew from portions of the Gaza Strip and Jericho, and Arafat returned to what Palestinians hoped would be the gradual creation of a fully independent state. Arafat was elected president of the new Palestinian National Authority (PNA) in 1993 and held the position until his death. Although he personally lived a simple life, Arafat was accused of allowing corruption among high-level Palestinian officials in the PNA and within Fatah. He retained a patriarchal hold on power. As negotiations faltered, Arafat became increasingly isolated. At the 2000 Camp David negotiations Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak offered to return much of the Occupied Territories in return for an end to conflict, with no terms for the resettlement of the refugees. Arafat rejected the offer but failed to make a counteroffer. Negotiations broke down completely, and many young Palestinians turned to the Islamic nationalist organization Hamas, which launched attacks—including suicide missions—within Israel and the Occupied Territories. In 2000 and 2001 a new intifada (the al-Aqsa Intifada), or Palestinian uprising, broke out. Israel retaliated by reoccupying territory it had previously vacated. Israeli forces surrounded Arafat in his compound in Ramallah, and for the last two years of his life, he remained under what amounted to house arrest. After some time of failing health he was moved to a hospital in Paris, where he died of uncertain causes in 2004. After Israel rejected Arafat’s wish to be buried in Jerusalem, his body was brought back to Ramallah for burial amid massive scenes of mourning among Palestinians. Although Arafat had failed to achieve an independent Palestinian state, he remained the leader who had made the existence of the Palestinian people and their quest for self-determination a matter of international concern. See also Arab-Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations; Arab-Israeli War (1982). Further reading: Aburish, Said K. Arafat: From Defender to Dictator. London: Bloomsbury, 1998; Hart, Alan. Arafat: Terrorist or Peacemaker? London: Sidgwick and Jackson,
1984; Rubin, Barry, and Judith Colp Rubin. Yasir Arafat. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Janice J. Terry
Arévalo, Juan José
(1904–1990) Guatemalan president and reformer From 1944 to 1954 Guatemala experienced an unprecedented democratic opening that began with the overthrow of the 13-year dictatorship of Jorge Ubico (1931–44) and ended with a coup d’état against president Jacobo Arbenz (1951–54), orchestrated by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Serving as president during the first six years of that democratic opening (March 15, 1945, to March 15, 1951), and instituting far-reaching constitutional, social, and labor reforms, was the former university professor and “spiritual socialist” Juan José Arévalo. In the early 1940s a protest movement against Ubico erupted in Guatemala, centered on the cities and spearheaded by university students, professionals, and disgruntled military officers. Ubico resigned on July 1, 1944. The three-man military junta that assumed power oversaw national elections, widely considered the fairest in Guatemalan history up to that time. Arévalo won around 85 percent of the vote. Arévalo was born in Taxisco, Guatemala, on September 10, 1904. At age 30, he traveled to Argentina, earning a doctorate in philosophy and teaching at the University of Tucumán. With Ubico’s overthrow, Arévalo returned to Guatemala and became the favorite of the protest movements that had ousted Ubico. In his inaugural address he outlined his vision of the “spiritual socialism” that would guide his administration. A complex and not entirely coherent political philosophy, Arévalo’s spiritual socialism emphasized the interests of working people, social justice, individual and collective rights, and respect for the dignity of ordinary people, including Guatemala’s large indigenous population. One of his administration’s first steps was to promulgate the constitution of 1945, which expanded the franchise to all illiterate males and literate females age 18 and older; forbade presidential reelection; and guaranteed the autonomy of Guatemala City’s University of San Carlos, with funding at 2 percent of the national budget. There followed a series of broad-ranging reforms in public health, social security, education, and labor relations akin to the New Deal in the United States. Gov-
Argentina, Madres de Plaza de Mayo
ernment expenditures on public health, including rural health clinics and potable water projects, expanded dramatically. The Social Security Law of 1946 created the Guatemalan Social Security Institute. Spending on education, literacy programs, and school construction rose 155 percent from 1946 to 1950. The 1947 Labor Code guaranteed workers’ rights to unionize, strike, and bargain collectively; mandated minimum wages; and limited child and female wage labor. An especially delicate issue on which Arévalo tread lightly was land reform. Most of the country’s arable land was owned by a small landowning elite and, on the Caribbean littoral, by the United Fruit Company, with its huge banana plantations. Establishing an Agrarian Studies Commission in 1947, and guaranteeing certain rights for rural laborers in wages, rents, and housing, for the most part Arévalo left the land tenure issue alone. His successor, Jacobo Arbenz, instituted major agrarian reforms, provoking the opposition of powerful conservative elements within Guatemala, the United Fruit Company, and the Eisenhower administration. Arbenz was ousted in a coup in June 1954, ushering in a prolonged period of military dictatorship. Arévalo died in Guatemala City on October 6, 1990. Further reading: Handy, Jim. Gift of the Devil: A History of Guatemala. Boston: South End Press, 1984; Schlesinger, Stephen, and Stephen Kinzer. Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala. Rev. ed. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2005. Michael J. Schroeder
Argentina, Madres de Plaza de Mayo One of the best-known human rights organizations to emerge in response to the dirty wars in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, the Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo (Association of Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo) began its silent vigils on April 30, 1977, protesting against and demanding accountability for the disappearance of their children during the Argentine military dictatorship (1976–83; it is estimated that during this period the military disappeared between 15,000 and 30,000 persons). Every Thursday afternoon, from 3:30 to 4:00 p.m., the Mothers would gather at the May Pyramid (Pirámide de Mayo) in the Plaza de Mayo in front of the presidential palace, wearing white head scarves, often carrying
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photographs of their missing children, and walk slowly in circles, demanding government accountability for their disappeared sons and daughters. The founding members of the organization included Azucena Villa flor Devincenti (its first president); Berta Braverman; Haydée García Buelas; the four sisters María Adela Gard de Antokoletz, Julia Gard, María Mercedes Gard, Cándida Gard; Delicia González; Pepa Noia; Mirta Baravalle; Kety Neuhaus; Raquel Arcushin; and Señora De Caimi. The Mothers’ Association slowly grew, despite the detention and disappearance of some of its founding members, including its first president, Azucena Devincenti. By the early 1980s the Madres had grown to several thousand members and garnered the support of key international human rights groups, including Amnesty International and the United Nations Human Rights Commission. Many consider that the Madres played an important role in delegitimizing the military dictatorship and helping to usher in the period of democratic rule from 1983. The Madres have continued their weekly vigils from 1977 to the present writing, demanding that the government account for their missing children and that the responsible parties be subjected to criminal prosecution, and refusing government offers of monetary compensation (reparación económica) if not accompanied by acknowledgment of responsibility. In 1986 the group split into two main factions: the Mothers of the Founding Line (Linea Fundadora), led by Hebe de Bonafini, and the Madres; each currently maintains its own Web site. The group has received international accolades for advancing the cause of human rights, including the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought (1992), the United Nations Prize for Peace Education (1999), and the United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights (2003). The Mothers of the Founding Line has been criticized by some for its lack of internal democracy, cults of personality, and other factors. The Madres also spawned the formation of related groups, including the Association of Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo (Asociación Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo). Both factions of the Madres continue to demand government accountability for crimes perpetrated during the dirty war, and remain active in the field of human rights. Further reading: Bouvard, Marguerite Guzman. Revolutionizing Motherhood: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1994; Fisher, Jo. Mothers of the Disappeared. Boston: South End Press, 1989; Steiner, Patricia Owen. Hebe’s Story: The Inspiring Rise and
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Dismaying Evolution of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Philadelphia: Xlibris, 2003. Michael J. Schroeder
Aristide, Jean-Bertrand (1953– ) Haitian priest, politician, and president A major and highly controversial figure in the modern history of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was born in Douyon in southern Haiti on July 15, 1953. After being orphaned as an infant, he was raised by the Society of Saint Frances de Sales (the Salesians), a Roman Catholic religious order. Educated at Salesian schools, including the Collège Notre-Dame, from which he graduated with honors in 1974, he continued his education at a number of religious schools in Europe, North America, the Middle East, and elsewhere, and at the University of Haiti, before his ordination as a Roman Catholic priest in 1982. A gifted orator and organizer, he was especially influenced by liberation theology, a strand of Roman Catholicism that became prominent from the 1960s and emphasized issues of social justice and political activism in alleviating the poverty and oppression of the poor and marginalized. In 1983 he was appointed to a parish in a Port-au-Prince slum, where he worked in a medical clinic and a halfway house for street children. His activism and charisma attracted a large following and helped him build a social base for his subsequent political career. In 1986 popular uprisings led to the end of the Duvalier dictatorship, creating a political opening Aristide would soon exploit. His fiery oratory and social radicalism alienated the church hierarchy, leading to his expulsion from the Salesian order in 1988. In 1990 in the first genuinely democratic elections in Haitian history, Aristide captured the presidency with two-thirds of the popular vote. He called his supporters “Lavalas,” which translates from the Haitian Creole as “cleansing flood” or “avalanche.” His first tenure as president lasted less than eight months—from his inauguration on February 7, 1991, to the military coup that ousted him on September 30. Going into exile in Venezuela and the United States, he was returned to power following a U.S. military intervention in 1994. During the same year he renounced his priesthood, marrying U.S. citizen Mildred Trouillot two years later. Constitutionally barred from running in the elections of December 1995, won by Raoul Cédras, in 2000 he won a second term. Political gridlock followed, and after a long period of political unrest, he was overthrown in a
Jean-Bertrand Aristide returns triumphantly to the National Palace at Port-au-Prince, Haiti, during Operation Uphold Democracy.
military coup in February 2004 and compelled to leave the country. From exile in South Africa he proclaimed himself the legitimate president of Haiti. Denounced by his opponents as a self-serving agitator who advocates violence in the pursuit of political power, and revered by his many supporters as the embodiment of the aspirations of Haiti’s poor and oppressed, he remains a polarizing and controversial figure in the modern history of the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country. Further reading: Aristide, Jean-Bertrand, with Christophe Wargny. An Autobiography. Translated by Linda M. Maloney. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993; Farmer, Paul. “Who Removed Aristide?” London Review of Books 26, no. 8 (April 15, 2004); Ridgeway, James, ed. The Haiti Files: Decoding the Crisis. Washington DC: Essential Books, 1994. Michael J. Schroeder
Armenia and Azerbaijan The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic were constituent members of the Soviet Union until its collapse in 1991 when
the former became the Republic of Armenia and the latter the Azerbaijani Republic. Armenia, as a part of the Soviet Union, saw a considerable period of peace. However, the intelligentsia of the area had suffered greatly during the rule of Joseph Stalin, with tens of thousands of Armenians being executed or deported. The tensions eased with the death of Stalin and the emergence of Nikita Khrushchev. The next 25 years saw rising standards of living, with improvements in education and health care. Many of those exiled were also able to return. From the 1970s Western tourists started to visit Yerevan and some other parts of Armenia. With glasnost during the 1980s, the situation improved considerably. Similarly, in Azerbaijan, there was suffering under Stalin, with some Azerbaijanis having supported the Germans during World War II. This also led to mass executions and deportations. During the 1950s Azerbaijan was transformed with the enlarging of the oil industry. This continued throughout the 1960s and helped provide money for an increase in civil engineering projects and infrastructure. In 1988 the governing council of Karabakh, officially the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, an enclave in Azerbaijan with 180,000 people, voted for unification with Armenia. Azerbaijanis, largely Shi’ite Muslims, then attacked the predominantly Christian Armenians at the Azerbaijani town of Sumgait. There was an upsurge in nationalist sentiment in both republics, with 250,000 Azerbaijanis living in Armenia and 500,000 Armenians in Azerbaijan at the start of the dispute. Many of these fled, and to make the situation worse still, in December 1998, an earthquake hit northern Armenia, destroying most of the town of Spitak, and also hitting Leninakan and Kirovakan, killing 25,000 and leaving 500,000 homeless. With a rise in Azerbaijani nationalism in 1989, the local government started blockading NagornoKarabakh and Armenia. In January 1990 the border between Nakhichevan and Iranian Azerbaijan was torn down, and Armenians in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, were massacred. With weapons stolen from army bases and depots, Armenian and Azerbaijani militia were soon fighting each other. The Soviet army was sent in and managed to fight its way into Baku, with hundreds dying. The Communists won the elections for the Azerbaijan Supreme Soviet (parliament) in 1990, and on August 30, 1991, Azerbaijan declared independence. Armenia followed suit on September 23. Full independence came about on December 25, with the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union.
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In Azerbaijan, Ayaz Mutalibov, leader under the Communists, became president, remaining in that position until May 18, 1992, when Isa Gambarov took over as acting president. On June 16, 1992, Abulfez Elchibey became president, being replaced on June 24, 1993, by Heydar Aliyev, who was acting president until September 1, when he became president in his own right. The former Soviet politician Aliyev started to exploit the oil reserves of the country. He managed to reduce unemployment and establish closer relations with Turkey. As he was dying, on October 15, 2003, his son, Ilham Aliyev, won the presidential election, for which he was the only candidate, and was sworn in as president 16 days later. In 1994 Azerbaijan became a member of the NATO Partnership for Peace, allying itself closely with the West, and since 2001 has been a member of the Council of Europe. In 2004 Azerbaijan joined the NATO Individual Partnership Action Plan. Nearly 99 percent of the 94 percent who voted in the 1991 referendum supported independence for Armenia. It became an independent country later that year but suffered greatly from a blockade by Azerbaijan. This was made worse when Turkey also blockaded the country in April 1993 after Armenian forces launched a military offensive against Azerbaijan. As Azerbaijan sought closer ties with the West, Armenia sought more engagement with the Russian Federation. Through intermediaries from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), there has been an end to fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh, although there has been much political ferment with increasing unemployment and some 600,000 people leaving the country between 1992 and 1998. Robert Kocharyan became acting president when Levon Ter-Petrosyan stepped down and has been president from April 9, 1998. During his time in office, there has been increasing dissatisfaction with the authoritarian way in which the country has been run, with dissidents being jailed and opposition parties banned. In recent years, with economic problems plaguing the country, there has been the emergence of the Union of Right-Wing Forces that was founded in Yerevan on May 29, 2000. On March 21, 2002, at the Permanent Council meeting of the OSCE, Armenia once again reiterated its claims to Nagorno-Karabakh, with both governments now determined on a peaceful solution. Further reading: Asadov, Sabir, and Israful Mammedov.Tragical Fate of Azerbaijanis in Armenia: A Brief Historical Essay. Baku: Azerbaijan, 2001; Croissant, Michael P. The Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict: Causes and Implications. Westport,
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arms race/atomic weapons
CT.: Praeger, 1998; Croissant, Michael P., and Bülent Aras. Oil and Politics in the Caspian Sea Region. Westport, CN: Praeger, 1999; de Waal, Thomas. Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War. New York: New York University Press, 2003; Miller, Donald E., and Lorna Touryan Miller. Armenia: Portraits of Survival and Hope. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Justin Corfield
arms race/atomic weapons Atomic weapons and the arms race were inseparable from the inception of the former: Developments in physics in the 1930s led physicists to believe that nuclear fission could be used as a weapon, and when World War II began, scientists stopped publishing on the topic of fission in order to avoid sharing information with the enemy. No one was yet sure what form a fissionbased weapon would take, but the Allied nations were concerned that Nazi Germany would develop it first. In the United States the Manhattan Project was supported by enormous resources beginning in 1942. Research occurred at various sites across North America and was overseen and organized at Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the desert provided safe sites for weapons testing. Though British scientists participated, as did many European exiles, the Soviet Union was not included in the project. Not until after Germany’s surrender did the Manhattan Project finish its work. The first test, code-named Trinity, was conducted on July 16, 1945. The first nuclear explosive, a nondeployable bomb nicknamed the Gadget, was a sphere of high explosive covered with surface detonators that directed the explosion inward, compressing a plutonium core in order to start a nuclear chain reaction that grew at an exponential rate. The Gadget exploded with a blast equal in force to about 18 thousand tons of TNT—tonnage of TNT became the standard measure of nuclear bombs thenceforth. The test was a success. Aural and visual evidence of the explosion reached as far as 200 miles away. Almost immediately two bombs were prepared for the ongoing war in the Pacific: Fat Man, a plutonium bomb like the Gadget, was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9; three days earlier at Hiroshima, Little Boy, a uranium “gun-type” bomb that worked by shooting one piece of uranium into another to start the chain reaction, had been dropped. Little Boy was the first gun-type nuclear bomb used, and while it seemed likely to work, it was
U.S. troops witness an atomic bomb test. Atomic weaponry shaped the international political landscape of the cold war.
at that time untested. Hundreds of thousands died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, prompting a Japanese surrender a week later. Future warfare would have to acknowledge the existence of nuclear weapons. Though the Soviets had been left out of the Manhattan Project and the United States was the only country with the capability to produce nuclear arms, the Soviet Union had been receiving information about the project throughout its duration thanks to its espionage efforts. Development of Soviet nuclear weapons had to be conducted without the extraordinary brain trust of Los Alamos, but had the advantage of requiring less innovation. Penal mining provided uranium, and on August 29, 1949, the Soviets successfully detonated First Lightning, a 22 kiloton Fat Man–style fission bomb. Four years after the start of the “Atomic Age,” and years before U.S. military intelligence had predicted the Soviets would succeed, the nuclear arms race was under way. In the aftermath of World War II the United States and the Soviet Union became the most significant and resourceful superpowers. New international alliances like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact transpired along ideological lines as much as geographical ones. The arms race was, on one level, simple one-upmanship: a competition through
which tensions could be worked out, as they were in the Olympics and the space race. Though both the United States and the Soviet Union quickly acquired the necessary means to do significant and catastrophic damage to their opponents, escalation continued as the arms race drove them both. The United States countered the Soviet acquisition of “the bomb” by developing the hydrogen bomb—also called the fusion bomb or the thermonuclear bomb. While the first generation of nuclear weapons used fission, the hydrogen bomb relied on nuclear fusion: the process of nuclei fusing into a larger nucleus and releasing energy as a by-product, the same process that fuels the Sun. On May 9, 1951, in the United States, Operation Greenhouse detonated a thermonuclear device codenamed George, with an explosive yield of 225 kilotons. Like the Gadget, George was a nondeployable device used to test the basic principles that would be involved in the design of its successors; a year later, Ivy Mike was detonated with a yield of 10.4 megatons (10,000 kilotons), and the hydrogen bomb officially became part of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The Soviets kept pace, detonating a preliminary fusion device in the summer of 1953 and a fullscale thermonuclear bomb in 1954. The destructive force of these new bombs was commonly measured in megatons, making the first atomic bombs seem almost trivial in comparison. A Fat Man–type bomb could eliminate a smaller city like Nagasaki; a hydrogen bomb could eliminate a major city and its infrastructure and produce considerably more fallout. Secrecy was part of the world of nuclear weaponry from the start. In the cold war years, new policies regulated information relevant to the design of nuclear arms: The 1946 Atomic Energy Act put nuclear technology under civilian control and banned the divulging of information related to such to any foreign nation. Eight years later a new act went substantially further: All nuclear technology was “born secret,” which is to say that it was automatically classified without need for evaluation. Nuclear technology was deemed to be a matter of national security. It is widely speculated that the born secret policy is unconstitutional, but the Supreme Court has yet to hear a case pertaining to it. Throughout the 1950s much of the innovation of the arms race was concerned with methods of deployment. The B-47 Stratojet and B-52 Stratofortress—strategic U.S. bomber jets designed to penetrate Soviet borders— and interceptor aircraft designed to intercept and eliminate bombers were early examples of such innovations. Bomb deployment was also made more user-friendly, requiring fewer specialists and bringing the utility of
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nuclear weapons closer to that of conventional explosives, which required limited instruction on the part of the soldiers deploying them. Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) allowed rival nations to deploy nuclear payloads without needing a pilot at all, and the United States proceeded to build missile installations throughout Europe, while the threat of Soviet missiles in Cuba sparked the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Some attention, of course, was paid to defense against nuclear attacks, not only the fallout shelters and cautionary films that became prevalent in the 1950s, but also antiballistic missiles to shoot down ICBMs before they struck their target, anti-aircraft artillery and fighter jets to intercept bombers, and increasingly sophisticated radar systems to detect incoming attacks. These preventative measures could not keep up with the offensive capabilities of a nuclear arsenal, though, and the development of nuclear submarines, which could launch a missile from the ocean—far from tactical targets—provided each side in the cold war with second-strike capability: the ability to ensure a retaliatory attack in the event of the other side’s first strike. Given the destructiveness of megaton bombs and the amount of fallout that would result from their wide-scale implementation, second-strike capability led to a state of what was called mutually assured destruction (MAD). As a defense strategy, MAD calls for the development and stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction in order to force a situation in which it is infeasible for either side to attack, because of the certainty of devastating retaliation. What may have at first seemed counterintuitive was nevertheless a critical component of cold war thinking that led to the détente, or eased tensions, of the 1970s. Meanwhile, as the United States and the Soviet Union remained dominant in the nuclear field, other nations developed programs of their own: Among the NATO allies, the United Kingdom and France both became nuclear powers by the end of 1960, while the People’s Republic of China followed suit in 1964, at a time when Sino-Soviet relations were at enough of an ebb that China was a potential threat to either the United States or the Soviet Union. During détente, the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NNPT) was signed by by a number of states, though it was not until 1992 that France and the People’s Republic of China signed. The NNPT limited the spread of nuclear capability by permitting only those five states then possessing them—which also happened to be the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council—to own nuclear weapons. It further permitted the use of nuclear power by other states, but
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only under conditions that would limit their ability to manufacture nuclear weapons. Any states not explicitly granted rights under this treaty would have to apply to the International Atomic Energy Agency, a regulatory branch of the United Nations, to pursue any nuclear technology activity. The easing of tensions also led to armament control treaties in the late 1960s and early 1970s. SALT I (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks), held in Helsinki, Finland, between the Soviet Union and the United States, restricted the production of strategic ballistic missile launchers and submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and further treaties limited nuclear testing and forbade nuclear weapons in space. Détente ended when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979. When Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980 he returned anti-Soviet rhetoric to pre-détente levels, calling for massive escalations in order to force the Soviet Union into economic collapse as a result of defense spending. One of his initiatives threatened the balance of MAD: The Strategic Defense Initiative, nicknamed Star Wars, would employ a space-based system to deflect missiles en route to the United States, thus limiting the Soviet second-strike capability. Though the system was never fully developed or employed, aspects of it were adopted by every subsequent administration, even after the cold war ended. The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (START) further limited nuclear arms, and periodic treaties continue to reduce the number of nuclear warheads in operation. The arms race effectively ended when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Though no one possesses the resources of the cold war superpowers, the rest of the world has begun to catch up to the nuclear states: In the post– cold war years India, Pakistan, and North Korea have all tested nuclear devices (North Korea withdrew from the NNPT in 2003; India and Pakistan never signed), and more are sure to follow. The International Atomic Energy Agency estimates that, as of 2006, 40 nonnuclear countries possessed the capability to manufacture nuclear weapons if they desired to. Further reading: Bethe, Hans Albrecht. The Road From Los Alamos. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991; DeVolpi, Alexander, Vladimir E. Minkov, Vadim A. Simoneko, and George S. Stanford. Nuclear Shadowboxing: Contemporary Threats from Cold War Weaponry. New York: Doubleday, 2004; Herken, Greg. Brotherhood of the Bomb. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2002; Holloway, David. Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939–1956. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995; Rhodes,
ichard. The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb. New York: R Simon and Schuster, 1995. Bill Kte’pi
art and architecture World War II had changed the nature of the world, and after postwar reconstruction had finished, there were important new trends in art and architecture that were to influence the latter half of the 20th century and the first years of the 21st century. From about 1950, a large number of artistic movements started flourishing in the United States and elsewhere. An early one was the abstract expressionism movement, which started in New York—the phrase first being coined by the art critic Robert Coates in 1946. Drawing from surrealism and also from Mexican social realists such as Diego Rivera and David Siqueiros, it was stylistically similar to some of the work of the Soviet artist Wassily Kandinsky. Abstract expressionism tended to rely on a spontaneous or subconscious creation, with early painters in this style being Jackson Pollock and Max Ernst. Mark Tobey from the northwest United States also produced paintings that developed further from some of Pollock’s style. Developing from abstract expressionism, and especially from the work of Jackson Pollock, the abstract style of color field painting involved covering canvases with large areas of solid color. The canvases, such as those by Mark Rothko, tended to be large, with other artists such as Clyfford Still, Hans Hofmann, Morris Louis, and Larry Zox using the same style. The beginning of pop art emerged in Great Britain in the mid-1950s, and quickly spread to the United States. The term pop art was coined by the art critic Lawrence Alloway. As well as paintings, the field included advertising material and comics. Many pop art works were made from plastic, and subsequently become regarded as kitsch, being aimed at a large audience. Notable pop artists include David Hockney, Roy Lichtenstein, George Segal, and Andy Warhol. Developments in pop art often spring from the availability of new materials or old materials in new forms. The name op art, derived from pop art but totally different in style, was a contraction of the term optical art, which highlights styles in geometric abstraction, often developing interesting optical perspectives. This grew, in some ways, from the Bauhaus movement of the 1930s, with the term being first used in October
1964. The Hungarian-born artist Victor Vasarely was perhaps one of the better-known artists in this field. Op art used straight and curved edges, and the next trend was Hard-Edge painting, which was largely a reaction to abstract expressionism. With its creative center being California through the 1960s, artists include Lorse Feitelson, his wife Helen Lundeberg, and was heavily promoted by Peter Selz, a professor at Claremont College in California. Minimal art was introduced in the late 1960s by Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Richard Serra, and others at the same time that Robert Bresson was directing films and Samuel Beckett was writing plays, also in a minimalist way. The trend toward minimalism continued through the early 1970s, being mirrored in architecture and design. The influence of minimalism led to a new trend of postminimalism, with grids and seriality adding a human element to the work. Tom Friedman, Eva Hesse, Anish Kapoor, Joel Shapiro, and Richard Tuttle were some whose work conveyed the essence of postminimalism.
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From the late 1960s a new trend of lyrical abstraction started to emerge from the abstract art movement, primarily in New York and Los Angeles, developing in Toronto, Canada, and London. It drew from tachisme, which had been popular as a French art style from 1945 until 1960, and also from abstract impressionism, the term lyrical abstraction being first coined by Robert Pincus-Witten in 1969. A greater environmental awareness from the late 1950s and early 1960s helped influence land art, which started in the late 1960s, whereby artworks were made from rocks, sticks, plants and soil from nature. Many of these works were made outdoors and have not survived, although they were recorded in photographs. Some artists were influenced by the photographs brought back from the Moon by Apollo missions, and there have been extensive outdoor projects by Latin American artists. Some ideas from this field have been expressed in conceptual art, which involved objects taking precedence over many aesthetic concerns. By the late 1960s the concept of photorealism
Campbell’s Soup Cans by Andy Warhol, 1962, displayed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Warhol was an American artist who became a central figure in the movement known as Pop Art.
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painting saw a return to the styles of the 17th and 18th centuries, in trying to create the look of a photograph in a painting. From the 1970s the trends were toward new fields called either contemporary art or postmodern art. This involved adapting the modernist ideas, and often incorporated some elements of popular culture, and even performance art, into newer designs or incorporating new material. architecture The period immediately after World War II saw the construction of many war memorials and the painting of artwork commemorating sacrifice in war. Gradually this gave way to civil engineering projects for Olympic and other sporting occasions and also many ambitious airport complexes. Architects were also involved in designing large bridges, such as those over the Bosphorus (Turkey), the Tagus (Portugal), the Humber Bridge (UK), and from the Malaysian mainland to Penang Island. There has also been the construction of large numbers of buildings for international organizations, such as the United Nations buildings in New York, the European Parliament in Strasbourg, the headquarters of UNESCO in Paris, Interpol in Paris, and the headquarters of the World Health Organization in Geneva. The period also saw many countries and cities competing to have the tallest habitable building, the tallest telecommunications tower, the tallest mast, and even the highest public observatory. But New York remained the city with the most skyscrapers, followed by Chicago, and then Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo, Houston, Singapore, Los Angeles, Dallas, and then Sydney, Australia. The starting of UNESCO World Heritage listing helped preserve architecture in some parts of the world but did not prevent major damage to some important structures, such as the Mostar Bridge (Bosnia) in 1992 and the Bamiyan Buddhas (Afghanistan) in 2001. Mention should also be made of UNESCO’s involvement in the moving of ancient Egyptian structures at Abu Simbel to construct the Aswa¯n Dam, and the restoration of the Borobudur Buddhist monument in Java, Indonesia. western europe After World War II, there was a major change in British architecture. Many new buildings were required due to war damage. The government focused initially on schools, as only 50 of the 1,000 schools in London survived the war undamaged. Additionally, the private sector involved itself in what became known as dormitory suburbs such as Basildon, Crawley, Harlow and Stevenage. The building
After World War II, many buildings were built for international organizations, such as the United Nations buildings in New York.
of Slough, near Windsor, to the west of London, became celebrated when the British poet laureate Sir John Betjeman denounced the city, suggesting that the easiest way of improving it was to bomb it, writing poetry to that effect. Other developments at the time included Telford, a large conurbation to the west of Birmingham, bringing together a number of villages; and the council flat developments in many inner cities, including some in central Glasgow, Scotland; and the Poplar housing estate in London built after the Festival of Britain in 1951. Gradually the trend became the construction of large numbers of modernist buildings. The four new cathedrals built in Britain incorporated much of the modern design, as seen in Liverpool Cathedral (started in 1903, completed in 1978, the architect Giles Gilbert Scott having died in 1960), Guildford Cathedral (started in 1936, consecrated in 1961), Coventry Cathedral (consecrated in 1962), and the Roman Catholic cathedral at Liverpool (consecrated in 1967). Sussex and York Universities were also functional in their design, with the stepped nature of parts of the University of East Anglia giving rise to it being known as the typewriter building. A reaction against this type of
design arose in 1984 when Prince Charles was critical of a “ultra-modern wing” to be added to the National Gallery on London’s Trafalgar Square—he called it a “monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved friend”—resulting in an outcry from some architects who felt that Prince Charles should not have spoken out against the project and support from many people who disliked the new design. Other important landmark architectural projects in London include the Telecom Building, Canary Wharf, the London Eye, and the new Wembley Stadium. British sculpture during this period revolved around Henry Moore (1898–1986), and a number of painters emerged, with the most famous probably being the Anglo-Irish figurative painter Francis Bacon (1909–92) and L. S. Lowry (1887–1976), who painted the industrial north of England. Peter Blake, R. B. Kitaj, and David Hockney became innovators in pop art. In Europe, the designs ranged from the traditional to the modernist. In France, the most famous modern designs included the Pompidou Center, also known as the Centre Beaubourg. It was designed by architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, and engineers Peter Rice and Edmund Happold. Named after the former president of France, it was opened in 1977 and is well known for its exterior. Also controversial was the glass pyramid that marks the entrance to the Louvre Museum, 21 meters tall, designed by the China-born American architect I. M. Pei. Other important architectural sites include the new National Library of France, opened in 1996; refurbishment of the Gare du Nord into a gallery; and the building of the satellite town and business district of La Défense to the west of Paris. In Brussels, the capital of Belgium, the Atomium, built for the 1958 Brussels World Fair, is unique. In Spain, art and architecture were intensely conservative until the death of the dictator Francisco Franco in 1975. The Valle de los Caidos, outside Madrid, has a massive cross dominating a hill, with a basilica tunneled into the rocks at its base. A memorial to the dead of the Spanish civil war, it also became the resting place of Franco when he died. The entrance to the Queen Sophia Art Center in Madrid, where Picasso’s Guernica (1937) is displayed—the painting returning to Spain in 1981—is an example of post-Francoist modernism. The gallery also exhibits some of the more famous pictures by Salvador Dalí (1904–89). Work also began again on completing Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, before the Olympic Games in the city in 1992, and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, designed by U.S. architect Frank Gehry, opened in September 1997 with both the building and its contents receiving much acclaim. In
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southern Spain, the tourist developments at Marbella, the Costa del Sol, and other places have also been an important part of Spain’s recent architectural development. Similar apartment complexes have also been built in Greece, Malta, and other tourist sites around the Mediterranean. The postwar Italian governments have been active in urban development in many parts of the country, but have aimed at retaining the Renaissance core of cities such as Florence. The Palazzetto dello Sport and Stadio Flaminio, constructed for the 1960 Rome Olympics, are still used. The Pirelli Tower in Milan, built in 1958, and the tomb of Pope John XXIII (d. 1963) and Rome Railway Station are all important architectural statements. Pier Luigi Nervi, introducing the use of concrete reinforced with mesh, helped influence architectural design around the world. After World War II, the rebuilding of Monte Cassino was notable; and in recent years the cleaning of the Sistine Chapel, and the work on preserving early modern artwork such as Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper have been important. Mention should also be made of the art of the surrealist Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978), Sandro Chia (b. 1946), and Francesco Clemente (b. 1952). In Germany, the rebuilding of the country saw a large number of new buildings, many functional civic buildings, or repairs to others, such as the reconstruction of the Berlin Cathedral, opened again in 1993, and the rebuilding of the Reichstag with a glass dome completed in 1999, overseen by the architect British Norman Foster. After the end of Nazi rule, artwork became much freer, with the graffiti and painting on the Berlin Wall being part of the new expressive artistic climate. The construction of the Jewish Museum in Berlin, designed by Daniel Libeskind, incorporated many new architectural features aimed at not responding to functional requirements in the same manner as many other museums. In Austria, the maverick architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser worked in Vienna, where he applied his modernist principles in his design of the Hundertwasserhaus, an apartment block, trying to challenge existing architectural designs by not having straight lines. He has also been involved in painting and in designing some Austrian postage stamps. eastern europe In eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, devastated by World War II, the rebuilding of many of the cities required large housing estates to be hurriedly built. With the city planners in Moscow anxious to restrict the growth of the city, some of these apartment blocks were built taller than the original architects had planned. For
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civic buildings, there were many in what became known as Stalinist Gothic, the most famous outside the Soviet Union being the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw. The most grandiose was undoubtedly the Palace of the People in Bucharest, Romania, which is one of the largest buildings in the world. Art during the Communist era hailed socialist endeavor or, within the exiled communities or underground, championed the resistance to the Communist government. In an effort to break away from this, there was a recent effort expended in Tiranë, Albania, to paint the graying apartment buildings in bright colors. The breakup of former Yugoslavia saw the shelling of Dubrovnik, which led to an international outcry—the international community contributing to the rebuilding of the Mostar Bridge. In the Soviet Union, the Communist government embarked on massive building projects, with war memorials, television towers, and civic buildings, as well as apartment blocks being built throughout the country, often decorated with revolutionary art. The Motherland statue in Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) is perhaps the most famous work of revolutionary art. Since the end of the Soviet Union and the collapse of communism, there has been a trend to adopt pre-1917 artistic styles. Great care and expense was lavished on restoring the czarist palaces and monuments, which, in Moscow, was reflected in the rebuilding of the Cathedral Church of Christ the Savior in the same style and on the same site as the building destroyed by Stalin. asia In China, the victory of the Communists in the Chinese civil war saw major changes throughout the country, the first being the destruction of the city walls around Beijing and numerous other cities. Large numbers of hospitals, schools, and other modest buildings were constructed throughout the country, with a number of important Communist landmarks—the most famous being around Tiananmen Square—with the building of the new Chinese Parliament, the Great Hall of the People, on the west side of the square, and the Museum of the People on the east side, with Mao’s Mausoleum later built at the southern end. Other major projects included the building of the Beijing subway and the construction of the nuclear fallout tunnel system under Beijing. Communist revolutionary art was famous for its telling of the heroic efforts of Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) and other Communist leaders, as well as important revolutionary actions. From the late 1980s, Beijing, as with other cities in China, saw a massive building boom, with office buildings, apartment blocks, and hotels being constructed at a
frenetic rate. For Shanghai, Pudong, which had been the location of many market gardens, was transformed with skyscrapers dwarfing those on the Bund, which they face across the river. The Oriental Pearl Tower, located there, is now the tallest building in Asia and the third-tallest in the world. Many of the designs in the skyscrapers throughout China can trace their roots to the massive urban development of Hong Kong from the 1960s. The Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong, designed by I. M. Pei, built in 1989, is important. Mention should also be made of the new Hong Kong Airport, and airports throughout China, as well as tourist sites such as the Tianjin History Museum. Many new buildings are being constructed for the Beijing Olympics. In Taiwan, the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial in Taipei and the National Palace Museum are two of the outstanding architectural sites on the island. During the Korean War (1950–53), much of the Korean Peninsula was devastated, and after the war both Pyongyang and Seoul needed extensive reconstruction. In Pyongyang, massive edifices were built such as the Kumsusan Memorial Palace, formerly the residence of the North Korean leader Kim Il Sung, now his resting place. The Mansudae Grand Monument, the Monument to the Juche Idea, the Great People’s Study House (the library), and the unfinished Ryugyong Hotel (now the tallest unoccupied building in the world) are all important architectural projects. Artists in North Korea not only produce communist propaganda art but also have been involved in working on Western animated films such as The Lion King (1994). In Japan, the rebuilding after the war was quickly dwarfed by the property boom of the 1970s and the 1980s, which saw massive buildings constructed in all of Japan’s major cities. Architects in Japan have long been involved in designing buildings to withstand earthquakes, and this was shown to have been important during the Kobe earthquake of 1995. In Southeast Asia, Vietnam has seen the construction of the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum in Hanoi, and the functional modernist Presidential Palace in Saigon (the scene of the final surrender of the South Vietnamese government). The Cu Chi Tunnels outside Saigon are also great architectural feats from the Vietnam War, which saw the destruction of much of the country, including large sections of the Imperial Palace at Hue. In Thailand, the tourist boom and the wealth that flowed into the country from the 1960s saw the construction of massive hotel complexes and condominiums in Bangkok and some other cities, leading to major traffic problems and pollution. Artwork in Thailand has
tended to remain rather traditional, and much appeals to the tourist market, with paintings by elephants now becoming popular. In Malaysia, the incredible wealth in the country from the 1980s led to the construction of the Petronas Towers (1996), the Masjid Wilayah Persekutuan (Federal Territory Mosque) in Kuala Lumpur (1998–2000), and the massive national expressway through western Malaysia. The Kuala Lumpur airport was also, for a short period, the largest airport in the world. In Singapore, the 1950s saw the start of the construction of many apartment blocks throughout the island by the Singapore Housing and Development Board. During the 1970s “Garden Cities” were created, and during the 1980s many skyscrapers were built, the two most well-known ones being possibly the UOB Building and the OCBC Building, both headquarters for banks. In Brunei, the Istana Nurul Iman in Bandar Seri Begawen, the official residence of the sultan, is larger than the Vatican—and is the largest residential palace in the world—designed by Filipino architect Leandro V. Locsin, and boasts 1,788 rooms. The Omar Ali Saifuddin Mosque, also in Brunei, was built in 1958 by a Malay architectural firm from Kuala Lumpur and dominates the central part of Bandar Seri Begawen. In Indonesia, the Monas Tower in Jakarta—built from 1961 until 1975 in Italian marble—and many civic buildings throughout the country demonstrate the increasing prosperity of the country, with Jakarta International Airport being designed in the traditional Javanese style (with heavy use of carved wooden features). The tourist boom has also seen a large number of hotels and guest houses of varying designs in Bali and in other places. The Imax Cinemas at Keong Mas in Jakarta once had the largest Imax screen in the world, taking its name the Golden Snail Theatre from its shape. The Komodo Natural History Museum—in the shape of its residents, Komodo dragons— is also worth mentioning. In Manila, the capital of the Philippines, the “Metro Manila” phase of the 1970s saw First Lady Imelda Marcos being responsible for the construction of massive buildings, with critics claiming that she was suffering from an “edifice complex.” There has even been a recent upsurge in building in Myanmar (formerly Burma), where Naypyidaw became the country’s capital on November 6, 2005. the rest of the world Artistic endeavor in India has followed the traditional Hindu myths, with Rama, Sita, and other characters from the Ramayana remaining popular, but also artwork which portrays India as a regional power. The massive wealth of India has seen the emergence of large areas of apartments
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and lavish homes, with the billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s 173-meter tower in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) being perhaps the most extravagant. In Pakistan the major architectural projects in the country centered on the moving of the country’s capital from Karachi to Rawalpindi and then to Islamabad, the project designed by the Greek architect and urban planner Constantinos A. Doxiadis. In Australia, the most famous building built during this period was the Sydney Opera House, designed by Jørn Utzon and opened in 1973. The Eureka Tower in Melbourne, opened in 2006, is now the tallest residential building in the world. On the art scene, aboriginal art has become extremely popular both within Australia and also overseas. The incredible wealth in the Middle East from oil led to Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain affording some of the best architects in the world and building iconic structures such as the Kuwait Towers and the Burj Al Aran Hotel in Dubai. In Baghdad, Iraq, the massive swords across the main road celebrating Saddam Hussein’s achievements outlived him, as did the shah’s monumental arch in Tehran, Iran. Throughout Africa, many European and indigenous architects have worked on the numerous civic buildings that were constructed by the newly emerging nations. The Cairo Tower in Egypt, built by Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1956–61, remains an important site in central Cairo. The construction of numerous civic buildings and presidential palaces throughout the continent is also worth mentioning, as is the Sun City complex in South Africa. In the United States, countless skyscrapers have been built, the most famous being the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, designed by Minoru Yamasaki, completed in 1972, and destroyed on September 11, 2001. Other important landmarks include Chicago’s Sears Tower—at one point the world’s tallest building—completed in 1974, and Seattle’s Space Needle, built in 1962 for the Seattle World’s Fair. Mention should also be made of the Glass Cathedral of Oral Roberts and the strange deconstructionist cityscape of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Stata Center. For art, in the United States many artists have turned to episodes in U.S. history, with countless scenes of the Native Americans, the American Revolutionary War (especially around the anniversary in 1976), and the American Civil War. Commemorations of more recent conflicts, such as the U.S.M.C. War Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and the Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., have risen as well. In Latin America, the massive enlargement of the cities of Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile has seen architects designing apartments and also civic amenities.
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The moving of the Brazilian capital to Brasília in 1960, with plans designed by the architect Oscar Niemeyer, the landscape architect Burle Max, and the urban planner Lucio Costahas, is one example. From the 1980s there has also been the construction of large parliament buildings, such as the Chilean parliament in Valparaíso and the Paraguayan parliament in Asunción. In terms of art, many painters return to traditional themes, but there have also been many new painting techniques, exemplified by the later works of Diego Rivera (1886– 1957) and the surrealist style of David Siqueiros (1896– 1974), both from Mexico, which have influenced many artists throughout Latin America. Further reading: Ades, Dawn. Art in Latin America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989; Fletcher, Bannister. A History of Architecture on the Comparative Method. London: The Athlone Press, 1961; Jacquet, Pierre. History of Architecture. Lausanne: Leisure Arts, 1966; Lucie-Smith, Edward. Lives of the Great 20th-Century Artists. London: Thames & Hudson, 2000; Lynton, Norbert. The Story of Modern Art. London: Phaidon Press, 1980; Read, Herbert. A Concise History of Modern Painting. London: Thames & Hudson, 1961; Richards, J. M. Who’s Who in Architecture from 1400 to the present. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1977. Justin Corfield
Asian Development Bank The Asian Development Bank (ADB), a nongovernmental organization headquartered in Manila, the Philippines, was founded to provide aid, funding, and various forms of financial and technical support to countries in Asia and the Pacific. The ADB started operations in 1966 and initially represented a group of 31 states. As of 2006 it had grown to have 66 members. This included 47 states from inside the zone and 19 countries elsewhere. The bank’s stated goal is to improve the lives of the peoples of the region by helping them develop economically and socially. This is a major task given the depths of poverty encountered in some regions. Many area peoples live on less than $2.00 per day. The bank has a specific commitment to helping less-developed and poorer Asian countries to advance economically. This help can take several forms and affect regional, subregional, and local projects and programs. The goals of the ADB are varied and include developments to foster economic growth and projects to reduce
poverty. The organization also attempts to assist in the improvement of conditions that affect women and children as well as to implement strategies that encourage human resource development and to promote environmentally friendly strategies for growth. The total lending volume is around $6 billion in the early 2000s, with technical assistance programs totalling $180 million a year. These financial programs can involve both public and private investments. In terms of economic development, the bank evaluates requests for help and then determines where its assistance is most appropriate. It favors proposals that offer a combination of social and economic development. It hopes that at least 50 percent of the projects will produce social or environmental benefits. Its other priorities are geared to economic growth and development. The bank also attempts to match its lending with governmental contributions. The ADB’s work encompasses many different activities and embraces many diverse areas. For example, the bank’s efforts affect agriculture and resources, finance, transport and communications, economic and social infrastructure, industrial investment, and mineral extraction projects. The ADB receives numerous proposals from its members for particular projects, which it assesses to determine their relative merits. It analyses the viability, value for money, economic and social impact, technical realities, provisions for accounting oversight, and contract and bidding implementation as well as openness and overall development priorities. After a thorough review and analysis—which can include review by outside agencies and consultants—worthy projects receive the bank’s approval, and a schedule for completion is determined that also details performance guidelines and expectations. The ADB is directed by a board of governors with one representative drawn from each member country. This board then elects a 12-member board of directors, with eight of the 12 coming from Asian-Pacific countries. The governors also elect a bank president, who acts as chairperson for the board of directors and whose term is five years, with the possibility of reelection. Traditionally the president has been a Japanese. This choice reflects Japan’s heavy investment in the bank of approximately 13 percent of its shares, a figure matched only by U.S. investment. Countries that withdraw from the organization have their investment reimbursed. In 2006 there were projects and feasibility studies in areas such as road development in Afghanistan, infra-
Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation
structure and transport strategies for India, telecommunications investment in Cambodia, road improvements in the Solomon Islands, water management programs in China, and regional efforts in energy-related areas. In recent years the bank has developed anticorruption initiatives. As in related institutions such as the World Bank, corruption can work against the developmental interests of poor countries. In theory, all projects must undergo regular and intensive ADB audits, yet issues still remain as to the misuse or misappropriation of funds and the wasteful use of project money. There are also concerns that there have been projects approved that do not help the poor as they should. Further reading: Guhan, G. The World Bank’s Lending in South Asia. Washington, DC: Brookings Institute, 1995; Rigg, Jonathan. Southeast Asia: The Human Landscape of Modernisation and Development. New York: Routledge, 2002; Watanabe, Mariko. Recovering Financial Systems: China and Asian Transition Economies. London: PalgraveMacMillan, 2006; World Bank. Social Development and Absolute Poverty in Asia and Latin America. Washington, DC: World Bank, 1996. Theodore W. Eversole
Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) APEC is an organization that aims to promote free trade and economic cooperation throughout the AsiaPacific region. It was created in 1989 because of the growing interdependence of Asia-Pacific economies and the establishment of regional economic blocs such as the European Union and the North American Free Trade Agreement. APEC intends to improve living standards and education levels through sustainable economic growth and to promote a sense of community and an appreciation of common values among Asia-Pacific countries. APEC’s membership includes 21 states, called “member economies.” Of these, 12 are founding members—Australia, Brunei, Canada, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and the United States— while Chile, China, Hong Kong, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Russia, Taiwan, and Vietnam joined at a later phase. APEC has no treaty obligations of its participants. Decisions made within APEC are reached by consensus, and commitments are undertaken on a voluntary basis. APEC’s membership accounts for approx-
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imately 40 percent of the world’s population, approximately 56 percent of world GDP, and about 48 percent of world trade. The first APEC Leaders’ Meeting occurred in 1993 and was organized by Bill Clinton in Blake Island, Washington. At its 1994 summit meeting in Bogor, Indonesia, APEC set an ambitious schedule to achieve free trade and raise the level of investments throughout the Asia-Pacific region by 2010 for members with developed economies and by 2020 for members with developing ones. The Osaka Action Agenda was adopted a year later and was designed to implement APEC’s goals of liberalizing trade and investment, facilitating business activities, and promoting economic and technical cooperation. The procedure that all APEC’s decisions had to be taken by consensus and preferably passed unanimously limited the effectiveness of APEC. In addition, although decisions can be taken in the absence of unanimity, they are not legally binding on member governments. In 1997 at the annual summit in Vancouver, Canada, police forces violently clashed with demonstrators objecting to the presence of Indonesian president Suharto. APEC is organized into numerous committees, special task commissions, working groups, and a business advisory council. The committees meet twice per year. The working groups are led by experts and consider specific issues, including energy, tourism, fishing, transportation, and telecommunications. Every year one of the member economies hosts an economic leaders’ meeting, selected ministerial meetings, senior officials meetings, the APEC Business Advisory Council and the APEC Study Centres Consortium, and also fills the executive director position at the APEC secretariat. The deputy executive director changes every year, as the position is given to a senior diplomat of the country who will be the APEC chair the following year. The APEC secretariat, established in 1993 and based in Singapore, provides coordination as well as technical and advisory support for all the organization’s initiatives. Further reading: Garnaut, Ross, and Peter Drysdale, eds. Asia Pacific Regionalism. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994; Mann, Catherine L. and Daniel H. Rosen. The New, Economy and APEC. Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 2002; McGrew, Anthony, and Christopher Brook, eds. Asia-Pacific in the New World Order. New York: Routledge, 1998. Luca Prono
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Assad, Hafez al-
Assad, Hafez al-
(1930–2000) Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad was born in Qardaha in northern Syria to peasant parents. The Assad family was from the Alawite Muslim minority (a breakaway sect from Twelver Shi’ism), traditionally the poorest and least powerful group in Syria. Assad became a member of the Ba’ath socialist party, as a teenager in 1946. Like many young Alawites, Assad received a free education in the Syrian military academy. While at the academy, Hafez al-Assad became lifelong friends with Mustafa Tlass, who would become the Syrian defense minister in the Assad regime. Assad was trained in the Soviet Union, and although he supported pan-Arabism, he opposed the 1958 union with Egypt to create the United Arab Republic (UAR) because of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s dominance of it. Syria dropped out of the UAR in 1961 with the support of the Ba’ath Party. As the fortunes of the Ba’ath Party rose, Assad was made head of the Syrian air force in 1964. The Ba’ath Party came to power in a bloodless coup in 1966. In a series of complex interparty rivalries Assad supported the military wing, versus Salah Jadid, who advocated a more radical socialist program. In the so-called corrective revolution of 1970, Assad defeated Jadid and seized power. In the 1971 referendum Assad was overwhelmingly elected president, a position he held until his death. Assad consolidated power by appointing close friends and fellow Alawites, who then owed their advancement directly to him to key positions within the military, intelligence services, and government offices. The Assad regime, a one-party state with a cult of personality surrounding Assad, proved to be remarkably stable. The infrastructure, including transportation and communication systems, was improved, and the government invested heavily in education, health care, and a huge dam on the Euphrates backed by Lake Assad to increase agricultural productivity and provide electricity for the country. The regime also spent heavily on the military, the backbone of its support. The status of women was also improved. Syria experienced economic growth in the 1970s, but stagnation set in during the 1980s. Assad was closely allied with the Soviet Union and, after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, suffered a loss of military supplies as well as international support. Although Assad continued publicly to advocate pan-Arabism, he increasingly adopted a Syrian nationalist stance in regional politics. During the Lebanese civil war Syria was asked by various Lebanese factions
and Arab nations to intervene militarily in 1976. However, after the civil war ended, Syrians troops remained in Lebanon, and Damascus continued to exercise considerable influence over Lebanese politics. In the face of mounting international pressure Syrian troops ultimately withdrew from Lebanon in 2005. The Assad regime was secular and proclaimed that Syria was a “democratic, popular, socialist state.” The Muslim Brotherhood, dominated by Sunni Muslims, opposed Assad’s secular state and in the early 1980s mounted a bombing campaign of bus stations, military installations, and other targets with the aim of bringing down the regime. Following a massive uprising in Hama, a brotherhood stronghold north of Damascus, Assad ordered Syrian troops to bombard the city and crush the rebellion in 1982. The brotherhood was defeated, but thousands were killed and much of the old city was destroyed. Assad strongly supported the Palestinian cause for self-determination, although he frequently clashed with the Palestine Liberation Organization under Yasir Arafat, whom Assad disliked. In negotiations with the United States and Israel, Assad was remarkably consistent. He demanded the full return of the Golan Heights, Syrian territory lost to Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War and not fully regained in the 1973 war, in exchange for a peace settlement. Owing in part to his long rivalry with Saddam Hussein in Iraq and support for the revolutionary regime in Iran, Assad supported the coalition invasion of Iraq in the First Gulf War in 1991 but opposed the U.S. invasion in 2003. Assad suffered a near-fatal heart attack in 1983, and, while he was still ill, his brother Rifaat attempted a coup. After Assad rallied loyal troops, the coup failed, and Rifaat was sent into exile and by 1988 removed from all official positions. Assad’s son Basil was initially groomed for succession, but after he died in an automobile accident in 1994, another son, Bashar, an ophthalmologist by training, was picked to follow his father as president. Hafez al-Assad was a pragmatic, authoritarian, and consistent political leader. After Hafez al-Assad’s death in 2000 Bashar was elected president. He followed his father’s general policies but loosened political controls and attempted to liberalize the system. He encouraged technological developments, particularly the Internet and computer technology. Bashar had to balance the desires of old Ba’ath hard-liners, however, who were loath to give up the privileges and power enjoyed under his father with political liberalization.
Association of Southeast Asian Nations
Owing in part to increased oil revenues, the Syrian economy grew in the 1990s. Like his father, Bashar demanded the return of the Golan Heights, and Israeli-Syrian negotiations failed to resolve the impasse. By 2006 Bashar faced mounting opposition from Israel and the United States for his support of Hizbollah, the Islamist Lebanese movement that continued to confront Israel along its northern border. The Assad regime seemed threatened by possible military attack from both Israel and the United States. In September 2007 Israelis conducted an airraid on a possible Syrian nuclear cache. See also Islamist movements. Further reading: Hinnebusch, Raymound A. Syria: Revolution from Above. London: Routledge, 2001; Seale, Patrick. Assad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. Janice J. Terry
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)— with Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand as original members—was established on August 8, 1967. As outlined in the Bangkok declaration of ASEAN, it was formed to strive for the peace and prosperity of the region. An important regional organization, ASEAN, whose member countries have a population of more than 500 million, strove for regional cooperation to benefit its member countries. It encompassed the rest of the countries of Southeast Asia over time with the admission of Brunei (1984), Vietnam (1995), Laos and Myanmar (1997), and Cambodia (1999). The Meeting of the ASEAN Heads of State and Government is the top decision-making body of the ASEAN. Every year, ASEAN Summit and ASEAN Ministerial meetings are held. The term of the secretary-general is five years, and he advises on and implements various ASEAN programs. The cooperation of member countries is through specialized bodies pertaining to education, energy, police, meteorology, and other areas. Against the changing backdrop of the geopolitical situation, the ASEAN countries saw the necessity of regional cooperation on matters of common interest. The ASEAN was established during the Vietnam War, and the member countries were bound together by fear of North Vietnam and China. The victory of communists in Indochina in the early 1970s and diminishing
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American involvement made the ASEAN states fearful of communism. The Kuala Lumpur declaration of November 22, 1971, called for the creation of a Zone of Peace, Freedom, and Neutrality (ZOPFAN) in Southeast Asia aimed at neutralization of the region. The triumph of communism in the three Indochinese states of Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam in 1975 spurred the ASEAN into action. Fearful of a militant and expanding communism, the ASEAN countries signed the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation at the First ASEAN Summit held at Bali, Indonesia, on February 24, 1976. It called for renunciation of the use of force, cooperation among the nations in Southeast Asia, and noninterference in one another’s internal affairs. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war, ASEAN moved in a new direction to meet with the challenges of globalization. The three Indochinese states became members. From the early 1990s ASEAN looked for increasing economic cooperation among member countries. At the Fourth ASEAN Summit held in Singapore in January 1992 an agreement was signed for the creation of an ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) within 15 years. The 1995 Bangkok Summit passed a resolution on the Agenda for Greater Economic Integration. The time frame of AFTA was reduced to 10 years. The ASEAN Vision 2020, adopted in 1997, envisaged an ASEAN Economic Region. There would be closer economic integration along with reduction of poverty and removal of economic disparities. The Framework Agreement for the Integration of Priority Sectors and its Protocols of 1999 called for the creation of a single market and production base. In 1994 the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) was established with non-ASEAN countries like the United States, Russia, China, India, and others to discuss security issues and take steps in confidence building. There was an agenda for an enhanced role of the ARF in matters of security dialogue and cooperation. Meetings on this topic were held in the Cambodian capital and in Potsdam, Germany, in 2004 and 2005 respectively. The December 2005 ASEAN Summit, held in Kuala Lumpur, noted with satisfaction progress toward a Free Trade Area, with such countries as Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand, India, and the Republic of Korea. ASEAN cooperates with the East Asian nations of China, Japan, and the Republic of Korea, which were accorded the special status of ASEAN Plus Three. They expected to have a free-trade agreement by the year 2010. India enjoys a special standing with ASEAN. An ASEAN-India Partnership for Peace and Progress was signed at the Third ASEAN-India Summit in November 2004.
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The ASEAN and its member countries have taken steps, through treaties, conventions, and communiqués, to prevent different types of organized crime with regional and international dimensions, such as terrorism, terrorist financing, money laundering, human trafficking, and drug smuggling. On February 24, 1976, the ASEAN countries declared that they would cooperate with one another and with international organizations to check illegal trafficking of drugs. The ASEAN Vision 2020 resolved to tackle the problems of drug trafficking, trafficking of women, and other transnational crimes. Through organizations like the ARF, Ministerial Meetings, the ASEAN Chiefs of Police (ASEANAPOL), the ASEAN Centre for Combating Transnational Crime (ACTC), the Senior Officials Meeting on Transnational Crime (SOMTC), and the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Transnational Crime (AMMTC), steps were taken to prevent various forms of crimes affecting Southeast Asia in particular and the world in general. The Vientiane Action Program of November 2004 contained measures to tackle the problem of terrorism. Further reading: Emmers, Ralf. Cooperative Security and the Balance of Power in ASEAN and ARF. New York: Routledge, 2003; Narine, Shaun. Explaining ASEAN: Regionalism in Southeast Asia. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002; Nesadurai, Helen E. S. Globalisation, Domestic Politics, and Regionalism. London: Routledge, 2003. Patit Paban Mishra
Aswa¯n Dam The Aswa¯n Dam was the cornerstone of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s program for Egyptian economic development. Nasser described the project as “more magnificent and seventeen times greater than the Pyramids.” The dam was to improve the living standard for Egyptians by increasing agricultural output and providing electricity for Egyptian villages and power for industrialization. The dam increased reclaimed agricultural land by onethird and provided 10,000 million kilowatt hours of electricity. Nasser Lake, one of the world’s largest artificial lakes at about 300 miles long, was created as a result of the dam. The dam was over 120 feet high and a mile wide and was one of the most extensive projects in the world at the time. However, the dam also had some unforeseen ecological impacts. Because it was no longer flushed by annual floodwater, Egyptian agricultural land increased
in salinity. The decrease of Nile floodwater into the Mediterranean resulted in a decrease of plankton, organic carbons, and fish. Advocates of smaller, more cost-effective projects argued that the massive amounts of money expended in construction of the dam might have been better spent in more appropriate technology projects. The dam provided Egyptians with a sense of pride, however, and from Nasser’s viewpoint was a project around which Egyptians could be rallied for other political and economic programs. Originally money and technology to build the dam was to come from the World Bank and Western nations, particularly the United States. But after Nasser adopted a policy of neutralism in the cold war, recognized the People’s Republic of China, and signed an arms deal with Czechoslovakia, John Foster Dulles, the U.S. secretary of state in the Eisenhower administration, concluded that Nasser was not a reliable ally. Consequently Dulles withdrew U.S. aid for the project and publicly criticized Egypt’s economic stability. Dulles hoped that the failure to secure economic aid for the dam would result in Nasser’s overthrow. On the contrary Nasser retaliated by nationalizing the Suez Canal, announcing that the income from the canal would be used to build the dam. The nationalization infuriated Great Britain and France and helped to precipitate the 1956 Arab-Israeli War. Ultimately the Soviet Union provided the money and technicians to build the dam. The dam was completed in the early 1970s after Nasser’s death. But Soviet influence over Egypt was short-lived for President Anwar el-Sadat, Nasser’s successor, ousted the Soviets shortly after the dam’s completion and turned instead toward the West and the United States. Further reading: Little, Tom. High Dam at Aswa¯n: Subjugation of the Nile. New York: John Day, 1965. Shibl, Yusuf. The Aswa¯n High Dam. Beirut: Arab Institute for Research and Publishing, 1971. Janice J. Terry
Aung San Suu Kyi
(1945– ) Nobel laureate and pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi was born to diplomat Daw Khin Kyi and Burmese (Myanmar) national hero Bogyoke Aung San on June 19, 1945. She was educated in Yangon, New Delhi, Oxford, and London. In 1969 she worked
in the United Nations Secretariat in New York and afterward in Bhutan. She was married to British academic Michael Aris in 1972, and the couple had two sons. In March 1988, Suu Kyi returned to Myanmar to take care of her ailing mother, and she became a prodemocracy political activist. Suu Kyi was destined to take the leadership in a country under the military dominance since 1962 of General Ne Win, who was also the leader of the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP). Her status as daughter of Aung San and her sound knowledge about her country’s culture contributed to her immense popularity. Ne Win resigned on July 23, 1988, but the military retained power and brutally crushed a popular uprising. The military junta then created the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) and changed its name to the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) in 1997. Suu Kyi and her associates established the National League for Democracy (NLD), which called for nonviolent protests and appealed to the United Nations to intervene on their behalf. Her status as a national leader made her position formidable. She adhered to her nonviolent ideals in spite of the brutality, intimidation, and slander directed against her by the SLORC. Suu Kyi criticized the violation of human rights by the military junta, calling for free and fair elections. Her meetings throughout the country attracted many people and caused the junta to put her under house arrest and to reject her candidature for the forthcoming elections. Despite this, her party won the May 1990 elections with 82 percent of the legislative seats. The international pressure forced the junta to release Suu Kyi in July 1995, but she was barred from leaving Yangon. In the same year her NLD delegates were expelled from the national convention, which was preparing a draft constitution. The convention itself was suspended in March 1996. In September 2000, Suu Kyi and 92 NLD members were put under house arrest again. There was another secret meeting between Suu Kyi and the junta in 2002 that resulted in the release of NLD prisoners due to increasing criticism of the regime from many lands over the world. She was released from house arrest on May 6, 2002, and was permitted to travel in Myanmar. But she was jailed again in 2003 and remained in jail in 2008. Her international standing remained high. The European Parliament awarded her the Sakharov prize for freedom of thought in July 1990. In October 1991 the Nobel Committee awarded her the Nobel Peace Prize, calling her “an outstanding example of the power of the powerless.” She donated the $1.3 million prize money to set up a trust for the
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health and education for her people. She was also given the Nehru Peace Award in 1995 by the government of India. Suu Kyi remained the undisputed leader of Myanmar for her ceaseless efforts to restore democracy and against the abuse of human rights. Further reading: Aung San Suu Kyi and Michael Aris, eds. Freedom from Fear and Other Writings. New York: Viking Press, 1991; Houtman, Gustaaf. Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics: Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy. Tokyo: University of Tokyo, 1999; Parenteau, John Greensboro. Prisoner for Peace: Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma’s Struggle for Democracy. North Carolina: Morgan Reynolds Incorporated, 1994; Victor, Barbara. The Lady: Aung San Suu Kyi: Nobel Laureate and Burma’s Prisoner. Boston: Faber and Faber, 2002. Patit Paban Mishra
Awami League The Awami League, a political party founded by lawyer and politician H. S. Suhrawardy in 1956, was at the forefront of the political developments that led to the creation of Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) in 1971. When the British left India in 1947, they had left behind two sovereign nations: India and Pakistan. In the years that followed independence, questions of national identity arose between East and West Pakistan and were taken up by the Awami League on the behalf of East Pakistan. The Awami League advocated that Bengali, spoken in East Pakistan, be given the status of national language alongside Urdu, which was spoken in West Pakistan and had been declared the national language in 1947. The league also promoted greater representation of Bengalis in central government, since Bengalis in central civilian services in West Pakistan did not possess a strong base of power within the region, and higher posts in military and government in East Pakistan were often held by West Pakistanis. During the military rule of General Ayub Khan (1958–69), there had been economic growth in both wings of the country, but the disparity between the wealth of West Pakistan and the poverty of East Pakistan had also been on the rise. Furthermore a war with India in 1965 had left East Pakistan undefended, because the constitution of the country provided for troops to be stationed only in West Pakistan. Under the leadership of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the Awami League formulated a six-point demand as a means of
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addressing the disadvantages faced by Bengalis in economic and national affairs. The six-point demand was to become a cornerstone of the nationalist movement for Bangladesh. Mujibur Rahman’s six-point demand wanted a parliamentary form of government in the country with representation based on population. The federal government was to be in charge of defense and foreign affairs only, and there were to be either two different currencies or one currency, in the event of which federal banks were to prevent the flight of capital from one region to the other. Fiscal policy was to be the responsibility of the federating units, and each unit was to have separate foreign exchange accounts. Lastly, in the interests of national security, both East and West Pakistan were to have a militia and a paramilitary force. The popularity of the Awami League as the representative of the Bengalis was attested by the results of the 1970 national elections, in which the Awami League captured 160 out of 162 seats in East Pakistan, and 38 percent of the national vote. Meanwhile, the majority of seats in West Pakistan, and 20 percent of the national vote, went to the Pakistan People’s Party led by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. When the time came for the two parties to form a government, tensions between the two wings of the country came to a head. The Awami League wanted the six points to be part of the new constitution, but met with resistance from Bhutto. General Yahya Khan, the president at the time, encouraged meetings between the two parties. The People’s Party under Bhutto began a campaign to discredit the Awami League by attacking the six-point demand and delaying the meeting of the National Assembly as a means of pressurizing the Awami League into a compromise. The delays in the meeting of the National Assembly, and Bhutto’s campaign against Mujibur Rahman, were seen as evidence of bad faith by East Pakistanis, and led to widespread public demonstrations and riots. By accepting Bhutto’s postponement of the meeting, Yahya had implicitly accepted Bhutto’s political authority. When Yahya called an all-party conference without consulting the Awami League, the Awami League called a strike and refused to attend the meeting. In the months between the election and the all-party conference, the Awami League had assumed authority and exercised powers of government in East Pakistan. When the league refused to attend the conference, and successive negotiations between Yahya and Mujibur Rahman failed, General Yahya accused the Awami League of treason and announced military intervention in East Pakistan, along with the arrest of all prominent
persons within the league. During the consequent civil war between East and West Pakistan, the Awami League formed the government-in-exile of the Republic of Bangladesh across the border in India. Repeated Indian insurgency into Pakistani soil and Indian support of the Bangladeshi freedom fighters led to a declaration of war on India by Pakistan. On December 17, 1971, a ceasefire was declared, and Pakistani troops surrendered. Mujibur Rahman was released by the new government of Pakistan under Bhutto and went on to become the first prime minister of Bangladesh. The Awami League emphasized nationalism, democracy, socialism, and secularism. Reconstruction efforts in a war-torn country, however, proved to be challenging to the new government. In the face of criticism and opposition, Mujibur Rahman declared Bangladesh a one-party state and gave himself the powers of president. Rahman was assassinated by a military officer in 1975, and martial law was imposed by Ziaur Rahman, the chief of army staff. In the 1980s the Awami League was revitalized by Mujibur Rahman’s daughter, Sheikh Hasina Wajid, who won the elections of 1986 and stayed in power until her term ended in 1990. The Awami League today remains a powerful and vocal opposition party in Bangladesh into the 21st century, and consistently opposes the role of the military in government. Further reading: Heraclides, Alexis. Self-Determination of Minorities in International Politics. London: Routledge, 1991; Jalal, Ayesha. Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995; Talbot, Ian. Pakistan: A Modern History. New York: Palgrave, 1998; Zaheer, Hasan. The Separation of East Pakistan: The Rise and Realization of Bengali Muslim Nationalism. Karachi, Pakistan, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Taymiya R. Zaman
Ayub Khan, Muhammad (1907–1974) Pakistani leader
Muhammad Ayub Khan, a military leader and the second president of Pakistan, was born on May 14, 1907, in the village of Rehana. His father, Mir Dad Khan, served in the British Indian Army. After finishing his military training at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in England, Ayub joined the army as an officer. He fought against the Japanese in Burma in World War II. After the partition of India in 1947, he became
the general commanding officer in East Pakistan. He was an able administrator and noncontroversial in politics, attributes that were instrumental in making him the first Pakistani commander in chief on January 17, 1951. In the cold war period, Ayub supported Pakistan’s joining U.S.-sponsored military alliances, and Pakistan received massive military and economic assistance from the United States. When President Iskander Mirza (1899–1969) imposed martial law on October 7, 1958, Ayub became the chief martial law administrator. Eleven days afterward, he deposed Iskander and proclaimed himself president. The presidency of Ayub was eventful in the history of Pakistan. There were reforms in the agricultural and industrial sectors with land reforms and job creation. There was construction of new dams and power stations. The Indus Water Treaty with India in 1960 settled disputes over the waters of six rivers of the Punjab. The Family Laws Ordinance of 1961 tried to empower women in matters relating to polygamy, marriage, and divorce. Islamabad became the new capital in 1962; Ayub lifted martial law in the same year. Ayub promulgated a new constitution in 1962, introducing democracy with indirect elections. But his policy alienated the Bengalis of eastern Pakistan, who felt marginalized and whose leader, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was imprisoned and prosecuted. Ayub’s capital received a severe jolt from the IndoPakistani War of 1965. There were border skirmishes beginning in March in the Rann of Kutch region, but they did not escalate because of British mediation. In August, Ayub began Operation Gibraltar by sending infiltrators to Kashmir, a bone of contention between Pakistan and India in the original conflict. India regained the territory occupied by Pakistan in the north and proceeded toward Lahore. Fearful of a widening
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conflict, the United Nations Security Council arranged for a cease-fire on September 22, and Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin invited Ayub and the Indian premier Lal Bahadur Shastri to Tashkent to negotiate. The signing of the Tashkent Agreement on January 10, 1965, saw both the armies going back to the positions they had held before the conflict. The Cease-Fire Line (CFL) would become the de facto border. India and Pakistan agreed to resolve their disputes by peaceful means and not to interfere in each other’s internal affairs. There was adverse reaction to the Tashkent Agreement in Pakistan. The opposition parties blamed him for sacrificing Pakistan’s interests, and the foreign minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (1928–79) resigned, forming an opposition Pakistan People’s Party in 1967. There were strikes and demonstrations throughout Pakistan. The army was called in in many cities. By the end of 1968, Ayub had lost the support of the majority of the population and a Democratic Action Committee was formed in January 1979 to restore democracy in Pakistan. The only course left for Ayub was resignation. Martial law was proclaimed once again on March 25, 1969, and General Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan (1917–80) was named the chief martial law administrator. Six days afterward he became the president. Ayub died on April 19, 1974. Further reading: Gauhar, Altaf. Ayub Khan, Pakistan’s First Military Ruler. Dhaka: The University Press Limited, 1996; Khan, Roedad. Pakistan, A Dream Gone Sour. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1997; Raza, Rafi, ed. Pakistan in Perspective, 1947–1997. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1997. Patit Paban Mishra
B Ba’ath Party The Ba’ath (“Renaissance” in Arabic) was a pan-Arab political party founded by Michel Aflaq and Salah alDin Bitar. From Syria, Aflaq (1910–89) came from a Greek Orthodox family; he studied at the Sorbonne and became a teacher in a well-known secondary school in Damascus. Bitar (1912–80), from a prominent Damascene Sunni Muslim family, also studied in France and taught at the same school as Aflaq. In 1940 they led a small group known as the Movement of Arab Renaissance, or Ba’ath, that professed a pan-Arab, anti-imperialism program. Aflaq was the preeminent ideologue of the party, which published a series of papers dealing with Arab nationalism, Arab union, and Arab socialism, as opposed to a strictly Marxist ideology. The party’s motto was “Unity, Freedom, Socialism.” In 1947 the group merged with another nationalist party to form the Arab Ba’ath Party. The new party attracted members including nationalistic youth; disaffected minorities, especially the Alawites in Syria; and young army officers. In 1953 the party unified with Akram Hourani’s Arab Socialist Party to become the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party. A popular nationalist, Hourani had a far wider following than Aflaq, and his participation in the party enlarged its support and membership. The party was organized into cells on the grassroots level, giving it considerable flexibility. Groups of cells (two to seven) were formed into party divisions that merged into party sections representing entire towns or rural districts and, at the highest level, party branches.
At periodic party congresses all the party branches met. The national command was the executive that exercised considerable power from the top down. In 1958 the Ba’ath strongly supported the creation of the United Arab Republic but became disenchanted with having to take a secondary role to that of Nasser and Egypt. The Ba’ath supported Syria’s withdrawal from the union in 1961, and a military coup in 1963 brought the Ba’ath into power. Bitar and Aflaq both supported the so-called civilian wing of the party versus the military wing, but they were outmaneuvered in 1966. Although he retained the title of secretary-general of the party, Aflaq held no real power and went into exile. He ultimately moved to Baghdad in 1974, where he enjoyed considerable respect but no real power. In 1989 Aflaq died, whereupon the Iraqi regime announced that he had converted to Islam prior to his death. After considerable infighting among Ba’athist officers in Syria, Hafez al-Assad seized power in 1970 and proceeded to establish a regime that lasted into the 21st century. Bitar split from the party owing to disagreements with the Assad regime; he went into exile in Paris, where he was assassinated—possibly by Syrian intelligence—in 1980. The Ba’ath established branches in Jordan, Lebanon, North and South Yemen, and other Arab states. Al-Saiqa was the Palestinian branch of the Ba’ath under control of Syria. Although these separate branches played some limited political roles in their respective countries, Syria and Iraq remained the centers of the party’s power. In Iraq the Ba’ath Party came to power in 1963 under Abd al-Salem Arif, but internal disputes again led to its 47
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loss of power. Under General Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr, who led a military coup in 1968, the Ba’ath returned to power. Although most Iraqi Ba’athists were not professional soldiers, they attracted considerable support from the military. Bakr’s main protégé, Saddam Hussein, a committed Ba’athist, ousted his mentor from power in 1979. Assad in Syria and Hussein in Iraq became bitter rivals, but both claimed to represent the real Ba’ath Party. Although both leaders professed their commitment to pan-Arabism, they adopted increasingly nationalistic policies to retain power. The Ba’ath Party in Iraq was dismantled after the U.S. invasion in 2003 but remained in power under Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Further reading: Baram, Amatzia. Culture, History and Ideology in the Formation of Ba’athist Iraq, 1968–89. London: Macmillan, 1991; Hinnebusch, Raymond A. Authoritarian Power and State Formation in Ba’athist Syria: Army, Party, and Peasant. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1990; Roberts, David. The Ba’ath and the Creation of Modern Syria. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987. Janice J. Terry
baby boom, U.S. The term baby boom refers to the dramatic increase in the population of certain industrialized nations in the years following the end of World War II. In the United States, the population grew from 141 million to 179 million— an increase of 27 percent between 1947 and 1960—at a time when immigration to the United States was limited by restrictive laws. By contrast, the population of the United States grew just 13 percent between 1960 and 1970. This increased birthrate generally affected all social classes and reversed a population decline that had been going on for 150 years. In Canada, the birthrate increased from 24.3 per thousand in 1945 to 28.9 in 1947, and did not return to lower rates until 1963. The boom in the United States can be explained by demographic and ideological factors. Although the age of marriage for both men and women dropped between 1930 and 1950, Great Depression uncertainties and massive social dislocations caused by war put a damper on reproduction. Both of these concerns had lifted by the late 1940s. By 1960, 97 percent of Americans over 18 had been married at least once; this was perhaps a product of postwar affluence but possibly also a response to a fear of nonmarital sexuality that had
been produced by wartime. The so-called nuclear family became a symbol of U.S. freedom. Ideological factors also contributed to the boom. Partly to ease the reentry of men returning from the war, women who had been engaged in war work were encouraged to leave the workplace and to concentrate on making a home for their families. This was accompanied by a preference for more than one child and a concurrent belief that childlessness demonstrated socially dysfunctional behavior. Women who married in the 1940s and 1950s generally had most of their children before they were 30 and allowed child-rearing to become their career. The G.I. Bill and suburbanization in the late 1940s and the 1950s helped establish the nuclear family ideal. The boom influenced the form of suburbanization by making the construction of schools and playgrounds necessary and caused an expansion in college and university construction. The baby boomers were the first generation to consider television their birthright, and several of the television programs of the 1950s depicted idealized versions of their family life. The idea that the nuclear family of the 1950s, as seen on television, represented “traditional family values” persisted into the 21st century. As baby boomers entered adolescence, many of them became associated with the Civil Rights movement, other student movements of the 1960s, and the so-called hippie counterculture. Members of the baby boom invented the slogan “Don’t trust anyone over thirty.” By the 1990s baby boomers were the “establishment” in the United States. Born in 1946, Bill Clinton, who served as president from 1992 to 2000, was America’s first baby-boomer president. Further reading: May, Elaine Tyler. Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era. New York: Basic Books, 1988; Owram, Doug. Born at the Right Time: A History of the Baby-Boom Generation. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996. David Miller Parker
Baghdad Pact/CENTO The Baghdad Pact, also known as the Middle East Treaty Organization (METO) and the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), was a mutual defense treaty that aimed to encircle the southwestern flank of the Soviet Union. The United States viewed the treaty, similar to
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NATO, as a means to prevent possible Soviet expansion into the vital oil-producing region of the Middle East during the cold war. It also enabled the United States to establish a military presence in member nations. CENTO began with a series of treaties of mutual cooperation between the United States, Pakistan, and Turkey in 1954 and a military assistance agreement with Iraq in the same year. In 1955 Turkey and Iraq signed a mutual defense treaty creating the foundation for the Baghdad Pact. In the same year Britain, Iran, and Pakistan joined the Baghdad Pact, which guaranteed economic and military assistance to any country in the pact that was threatened by communism. In 1958 a coup in Iraq ousted the pro-Western government, and the following year Iraq withdrew from the treaty, prompting the change of its name to the Central Treaty Organization. The effectiveness of CENTO was lessened during the Indo-Pakistani Wars of 1965 and 1971; neither party to the treaty rushed to assist Pakistan even though India was at the time an ally of the Soviet Union. Following the overthrow of the proWestern Pahlavi dynasty and the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, Iran also withdrew from CENTO. Along with the failure of CENTO members to assist Pakistan, the withdrawal of Iran and Iraq from the treaty led to the treaty’s demise. See also Nasser, Gamal Abdel. Further reading: Kerr, Malcolm. The Arab Cold War: Gamal Abd Al-Nasir and His Rivals, 1958–1970. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1971; Ramazani, Rouhollah K. Iran’s Foreign Policy, 1914–1973: A Study of Foreign Policy in Modernizing Nations. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1975. Ramzi Abou Zeineddine
Balkans (1991–present) Since 1991 the region of the Balkans has been a place of dynamic change. The region (excluding Greece) has been divided into two subregions: the Western Balkans, consisting of Albania and the entities that emerged from the breakup of Yugoslavia—Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Montenegro, and Bulgaria and Romania. The division of the Balkans into two subregions reflects the distinct dynamics in the two sets of states. For instance, the Western Balkans were subjected post-1991 to the dynamics of building nation-states, while Bulgaria and Romania embarked
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on the path of postcommunist consolidation of democracy, marked by free elections, market liberalization, and the strengthening of civil society. However, the underlying feature characterizing the developments in all Balkan countries was the uncertainty of their transition process. This may be the main reason why Slovenia, which emerged from the dissolution of Yugoslavia, not only managed to distance itself from the Balkans with its domestic and foreign policy objectives but also ultimately “left” the region altogether. Ambiguity dominated the Balkan states for the better part of the 1990s. This pattern changed as a result of the Kosovo crisis of 1999 for two reasons. First, and perhaps tragically, by that time the nation-state-building projects in the western Balkans had reached a plateau of stability, which allowed the countries from that subregion to focus on their democratization. The uneven transition processes in Bulgaria and Romania had led to the establishment of the first reformist governments in those countries. Second, in the aftermath of the Kosovo crisis the two dominant international institutions in Europe— the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)—altered their perceptions of the Balkans. After 1999 they recognized the candidate status of Bulgaria and Romania and outlined the prospect of membership for the countries of the Western Balkans. Such twin alteration of the intraregional and extraregional trends in the Balkans informed the 21stcentury processes in the region. bulgaria Despite their being lumped together, the postcommunist development trajectories of Bulgaria and Romania were characterized by quite different dynamics. The transition in Bulgaria, which began on November 10, 1989, with the removal of Todor Zhivkov as head of state, was in effect an internal coup within the Bulgarian Communist Party. These developments set up the background for a rather unpredictable transformation process, one that was initiated from “above” and did not reflect a significant social anxiety with the communist status quo. The pattern of power up to 1997 was marked by governments that came, tried their policies, and were ousted by either the corrective of popular unrest or a change of allegiance of coalition partners. After 1997, however, governments followed the road of democratization and market reforms fairly consistently and pursued the objectives of EU and NATO integration. As a result, on March 29, 2004, Bulgaria became a member of NATO and joined the EU on January 1, 2007.
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Personnel with the NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) in Bosnia collect weapons seized during Operation Harvest. The steel plant melts the weapons and renders them as harmless metal.
romania In Romania, the transition process began with a series of violent protests across the country in December 1989, which culminated with the execution of the communist dictator Nicolae Ceaus¸escu on Christmas night, 1989. During the winter of 1989–90 a new political formation emerged, which called itself the National Salvation Front (NSF). It established itself as the vanguard of the revolution and ruled in Romania until 1996. During this period the government was afflicted by internal dissent as a result of the authoritarian tendencies of the NSF leader Ion Iliescu and domestic unrest caused by both the interethnic tensions with the substantial Hungarian minority located in Transylvania and the social disorder caused by the miners’ uprising during 1991. Another set of problems was associated with the NSF’s wavering foreign policy. After the elections in 1996, however, consecutive governments did away with the uncertainty characterizing the country’s initial transition process. Thus, like Bulgaria, Romania joined NATO on March 29, 2004, and joined the EU on January 1, 2007.
albania The post-1991 period in the subregion of the western Balkans was in many respects even more heterogeneous than the one in Bulgaria and Romania. Although all countries in the subregion experienced violent upheavals of one sort or another, they dealt with their effects differently. Albania was the only country from the western Balkans that did not emerge from the dissolution of former Yugoslavia. Yet internal conflict beleaguered its postcommunist development. The period up to the 1992 elections was generally characterized by chaos, which led to an exacerbation of the division between the north and the south of the country, rapid growth of organized crime, and the beginning of large-scale emigration fueled by the economic deterioration. Subsequent governments failed to address these problems, which led to a severe crisis in the country during 1997. It was spurred by the collapse of several financial pyramid schemes, which wiped out the savings of the majority of the Albanian population. During the unrest, military depots were raided and scores of weapons were looted. Order was restored only after the international
community dispatched a military force to the country during Operation Alba. Albania did not fully recover from this crisis, and in 2006 continued to be the poorest country in Europe. republic of macedonia The transition of the other countries from the western Balkans was marked by the wars of Yugoslav dissolution. Unlike the other republics of former Yugoslavia, however, Macedonia succeeded to gain its independence peacefully after a referendum on September 8, 1991. The country’s transition, however, was hampered by the embargo on former Yugoslavia imposed by the international community. At the same time the country faced an embargo from Greece, which refused to recognize the country by its constitutional name and continued to refer to it as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Concurrently the existence of the Macedonian nation and language was challenged by Bulgaria. Furthermore the ecumenical independence of the Macedonian Orthodox Church continued to be challenged by the Serbian Orthodox Church. None of these challenges threatened the existence of the Macedonian state as much as the tension caused by the conflict with the substantial Albanian minority in the country. In the wake of the Kosovo conflict the nearly 25 percent of Albanians living in Macedonia demanded greater recognition of their cultural and political rights. This led to violence during 2001. The conflict was settled under pressure from the international community with the signing of the Ohrid Peace Accords in August 2001. As a result of the implementation of these accords the EU recognized Macedonia as a candidate country in December 2005. It became a member of NATO’s Partnership for Peace program in 1995. croatia The beginning of the democratic transition in Croatia is usually dated to the electoral victory of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) in the first multiparty elections in April 1990. The vote for the HDZ, led by Franjo Tudjman, was also a vote for independence from Yugoslavia. The subsequent Homeland War lasted until 1995 and witnessed the territorial consolidation of the country and the exodus of the Serbian minority, as well as the military involvement of Croatia in the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The authoritarian rule of President Tudjman, which lasted until his death in 1999, was characterized by nepotism, criminal privatization, and subversion of constitutional practices. It was only after the parliamentary and presidential elections in
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2000 that Croatia began affiliating itself with European institutions. On May 25, 2000, it became a member of NATO’s Partnership for Peace program. In terms of its relations with the EU, Croatia was the most advanced country from the subregion of the western Balkans. On November 13, 2005, it began its accession negotiations, which were the final stage in gaining membership to the Brussels-based bloc. bosnia-herzegovina The development of Bosnia-Herzegovina after 1991 was marked by war, which ravaged the country until 1995. During this time, over 250,000 people lost their lives and many more were either internally displaced or fled the country altogether. After the signing of the General Framework Agreement for Peace (Dayton Accords) in 1995, Bosnia-Herzegovina became a virtual protectorate of the international community with a rotating presidency between the representatives of the three dominant ethnic groups—Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs. However, decision-making in the country was overseen by a High Representative of the International Community, who could intervene in the domestic affairs of the state and remove elected officials. Bosnia-Herzegovina gradually overcame the division between the three ethnic communities and progressed with the consolidation of its statehood. serbia and montenegro Until the Kosovo crisis of 1999, the political process in Serbia and Montenegro was driven by the extreme nationalism propagated by Slobodan Miloševic´, which fuelled the breakup of Yugoslavia. As a result Serbia and Montenegro were involved in several wars and subjected to international sanctions. Miloševic´’s ouster during the elections of 2000 and his subsequent arrest and transfer to the International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia in 2001 seemed to suggest that the country was distancing itself from the policies of the 1990s. However the murder of the reformist Serbian prime minister Zoran Djindjic on March 12, 2003, reflected the continuing legacy of the wars. Montenegro held a referendum on its independence in May 2006 where its citizens voted to become an independent nation. Montenegro declared its independence on June 3, 2006, followed by Serbia’s declaration of independence on June 5, 2006. A further complication was the status of Kosovo, which after the 1999 conflict remained a protectorate of the UN, although still formally a province of Serbia. In 2006 representatives of the international community, the Serbs, and the Kosovar
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Albanians conducted talks however, on the status of the province. The talk yielded little progress, as the Kosovo citizens favored independence, which was formally declared in February 2008, despite Serbia’s objectives. Further reading: Andjelic, Neven. Bosnia-Herzegovina: The End of a Legacy. London: Frank Cass, 2003; Bartlett, William. Croatia: Between Europe and the Balkans. London: Routledge, 2003; Dimitrov, Vesselin. Bulgaria: The Uneven Transition. London: Routledge, 2001; Light, Duncan, and David Phinnemore, eds. Post-Communist Romania. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001; Vickers, Miranda, and James Pettifer. Albania: From Anarchy to a Balkan Identity. New York: New York University Press, 2000. Emilian Kavalski
Baltic States (1991–present) In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev, the newly elected general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, introduced two concepts to his country and its satellite states that would fundamentally change the course of human history: glasnost and perestroika. Glasnost, which literally means “openness,” allowed the citizens of the Soviet Union and its satellite states greater freedom of expression. Perestroika was about restructuring the Soviet economy, shifting from rigid, centralized state planning to a more flexible approach to combat chronic shortages of consumer goods. These two reforms, coupled with struggles between moderate and hard-line Communists within the Politburo, the economic strain of the war in Afghanistan, the renewal of the arms race with the West, and the revolutions that swept through the satellite states in 1989, furthered the calls for secession from the Soviet Union by the three Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The desire for independence from the Soviet Union had deep roots, stretching back to their annexation in 1940 per the terms of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. The Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, signed in August 1939 by Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler, provided for the three Baltic states and the eastern third of Poland to fall under a Soviet sphere of influence in exchange for the Soviet Union’s neutrality upon the German invasion of western Poland. Following the annexations, tens of thousands of Balts were deported from their homelands by Soviet authorities and shipped eastward, a process repeated in the late 1940s. The aim of the wide-sweeping deportations
was to remove those most likely to resist Soviet occupation and communism. From the early 1950s until the mid-1980s, protests against Soviet control were limited and brutally crushed by government forces. However the freedom promised by Gorbachev’s reforms led, by 1987, to popular demonstrations in major cities such as Tallinn (Estonia), Riga (Latvia), and Vilnius (Lithuania) against Soviet rule. In 1988, these spurred the establishment of popular nationalist organizations in Estonia (April), Lithuania (June), and Latvia (October). The first official cracks in the forced relationship between the Baltic states and the Soviet Union began to appear in late 1988 when the Estonian Supreme Soviet declared Estonia’s sovereignty. This proclamation was quickly followed by similar declarations by its counterparts in Lithuania and Latvia in May 1989. On August 23, 1989, the Balts demanded independence from Soviet control by forming a continuous human chain of more than 2 million people, 370 miles long, that linked their capital cities. When the Soviet Union responded with force to demonstrations in Vilnius and Riga in January 1991, the response of Baltic citizens was swift and decisive. Between February and March of 1991 all three states held referenda regarding independence. In contrast, referenda held by the Soviets testing the willingness to continue the union were predominantly boycotted by the Baltic population. In August 1991, all three Baltic states officially declared their independence, received external recognition of such, and were admitted by the United Nations as independent nations. On September 6, 1991, in the aftermath of the failed hardline coup attempt to replace Gorbachev in August, the Soviet Union recognized the three Baltic states. Having successfully won their independence, each of the Baltic states then had multiple issues to address: politically, the formation of new governments, the foundation of political parties, and the drafting of constitutions; economically, restoring private property, releasing state control of industrial development and collectivization of farms, transitioning to an independent currency, and securing a solid and independent economic base; and socially, restructuring the school system and curriculum, restoring traditional institutions, including churches, and dealing with issues of citizenship and ethnicity. The Baltic states were more difficult given that they were literally controlled by Moscow. They lacked independent institutions from which they could begin to build. The Estonians officially adopted their new constitution by referendum on June 28, 1992. This was soon
followed by elections for their parliament, the Riigikogu, in September, which brought a center-right coalition into power, led by the Fatherland Party (Isamaa). Elections for Lithuania’s parliament, the Seimas, occurred in October 1992 and resulted in a majority victory for the Lithuanian Democrat Labor Party. The same month a new Lithuanian constitution, establishing a democratic republic, was adopted by popular referendum and endorsed by the newly elected parliament. Latvians held the first national elections for their parliament, the Saeima, in June of 1993, leading to the victory of the centrist party, Latvia’s Way (Latvijas Cels), at the polls. The question of citizenship for non-Balts continued to be a major point of contention. In 1989 Lithuania had the smallest percentage of Russians among its population at 9.4 percent; therefore it chose a more inclusive approach to citizenship. However Latvia’s Russian minority was 34 percent of its overall population and Estonia’s Russian population made up approximately 30 percent. In November 1991 Estonia was the first Baltic state to establish specific divisions between citizens, as native Estonians and predominantly Russian immigrants who would have to undergo a process of naturalization before they were granted citizenship. Initially, Latvia passed a strict citizenship bill in 1994, establishing a quota of 2,000 maximum naturalizations per year. This quota provision was eliminated. Following freedom from Soviet rule, economic productivity fell dramatically across Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The new governments struggled to transition from state-controlled, command economies to market capitalism. Industrial production in Estonia fell by more than 50 percent in 1992, whereas in Latvia it fell by 33 percent, and in Lithuania by about 40 percent. The vast majority of workers maintained employment, indicating that worker productivity fell sharply as well. Given the backward nature of factories, transportation systems, and communication networks due to the impoverished Soviet system as a whole, the Baltic nations grappled with reforming their economies and developing markets in the West. They were also at a disadvantage in terms of learning basic capitalist business techniques such as marketing, packaging, and design. The Balts needed to retool not only their machinery but their economic mentality as well. Another psychological barrier to embracing capitalism was the longlasting legacy of bitterness toward those who profited and operated on the black market under the communist system. Often those who privatized larger businesses first were the Soviet managers of these plants and factories, continuing their pattern of economic exploita-
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tion. Privatization on the smaller scale occurred with less corruption. Within the agricultural sector, the transition from collectivized farms to privatization was extremely difficult. Two additional negative elements were the lack of an adequate supply of farm machinery and the problems generated by a firm commitment to returning lands to those from whom they were taken during the process of collectivization. In addition, during 1992 a severe drought wreaked havoc on both food production and the stability of the livestock population. Disaster was averted only through the infusion of large amounts of Western aid. But the prices of native agricultural products rose sharply, resulting in stronger competition with food imports from the West. This led farmers to lobby their governments to institute protective tariffs for native-grown products, a tactic that would then harm the drive to increase exports of Baltic products to Western markets, which was connected to their desire to be integrated into Western economic entities. Estonia was the first of the three Baltic States to reestablish an independent currency, the kroon, in June of 1992, and it led the charge for economic reform. Latvia soon followed with limited circulation of the lat in March of 1993, and Lithuania unveiled the litas in June of 1993. Although an important symbolic step on the path to complete autonomy, the emergence of independent currencies also emphasized some of the weaknesses within the economic structure. Another source of instability was the lack of hard currency held by the respective governments. This weakness was remedied in part by the restoration of gold reserves by Western nations; these reserves had been sent west in 1940 as the Soviet occupation had begun. By 1993 Estonia and Lithuania gained membership in the Council of Europe; Latvia soon followed suit in 1995. By late 1995 all three had applied to join the European Union; by March 2004 all three had officially joined. Another important means of securing full independence from the Soviet Union was the development of national militaries and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Baltic soil. These national militaries began as all-volunteer forces and were hampered by a lack of well-trained Balts, given that few Balts had wanted to become officers in the Soviet military. In addition, during the transition period, government funds for training and equipping soldiers and for securing weaponry were scarce. Russian forces withdrew from Lithuania in August 1993; in August 1994 they withdrew from both Latvia and Estonia. All three Baltic states joined NATO in 2004.
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Further reading: Akerman, Ella, and Graeme Herd. “Russian Foreign Policy: The CIS and the Baltic States.” In Russian Politics Under Putin. Cameron Ross, ed. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004; Juviler, Peter. Freedom’s Ordeal: The Struggle for Human Rights and Democracy in Post-Soviet States. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998; Lieven, Anatol. The Baltic Revolution: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Path to Independence. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993; Norgaard, Ole. The Baltic States After Independence. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 1997; Vilpisauakas, Ramunas and Steponaviciene. “The Baltic States: The Economic Dimension.” In Winners and Losers of EU Integration. Helena Tang, ed. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2000. Laura J. Hilton
Banda, Hastings
(1896?–1997) Malawian president Dr. Hastings Banda was a physician and prime minister, founding president, and former dictator of the African country of Malawi. After leading the country’s independence movement against the British, Banda became prime minister in 1963. An authoritarian ruler, Banda became president in 1966 and president for life in 1971. In 1994 Banda authorized democratic elections. He was defeated. Banda died in a South African hospital in 1997; he was rumored to have been 101 years old. The name “Malawi” was given to the country formerly named Nyasaland by Dr. Banda. Having read a French map that called the dominating lake of the country “Lake Maravi,” Banda decided he liked the sound and appearance of the name and chose a similar name. Because of tribal migrations, several tribes make Malawi their home. The Tumbuka from the Congo and the Chewa from Zambia moved into Malawi during the 14th through the 16th centuries and remain there today. The Bantu peoples flourished in Malawi during the 18th century and the Yao moved into southern Malawi in the 19th century. It is thought that the Yao used firearms taken from Arabian traders to capture weaker tribes for the growing slave trade. Although slave trading had existed in Africa for centuries, the international transatlantic slave trade drastically increased the practice. The first Europeans in Malawi were Portuguese explorers, but the most famous explorer was the Brit-
ish Dr. David Livingstone in 1846. Dr. Livingstone would return to Malawi twice more to help establish trade routes and mission sites before his death in 1873. Livingstone’s Malawian legacy was the increased trade and missionary presence in Malawi, which eventually became a trade center. During the late 19th century, Malawi became a British protectorate. During the next few decades, the British government officials in Malawi battled slave traders, oversaw the growth of European settlers, constructed a postal system, and built a railway line. Local Malawian peoples were dissatisfied under the British colonial system and in 1915, the Reverend John Chilembwe led a violent uprising against European settlers living on formerly Malawian farmlands. By 1944 the growing elite consisting of Europeans, Americans, and Africans organized the Nyasaland African Congress in order to protect their new holdings. Britain joined the Central African Federation, a whitedominated organization, in 1953. When he was young, Hastings Banda left Malawi for Rhodesia and South Africa. The son of peasants, Banda went to work in the South African gold mines and by 1925 had enough money to head to America for college. He studied on a scholarship at the Wilberforce Institute in Ohio and then went to the University of Chicago. After graduation, Banda went to Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee. Although he graduated in 1937, Banda was required to earn a second medical degree in order to practice medicine in the British Empire. In 1941 he graduated from the School of Medicine of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of the University of Edinburgh. After World War II, Banda established his medical practice in Scotland and London. His office soon became a meeting place for exiled African leaders. However, in 1953 Dr. Banda chose to return to Africa, establishing a medical practice in Ghana. By 1958, Banda had returned to Malawi to campaign against the Central African Federation. In 1959 he spent time in prison for his political activities but was released in April 1960. In 1963, Banda and his Malawi Congress Party won the elections in a landslide victory. Dr. Hastings Banda became the prime minister on February 1, 1963. The British still controlled all of Malawi’s financial, security, and judicial systems. In May 1963 a new constitution took effect, winning Malawi its independence from Britain. In 1966 Malawi became a republic with Banda as its president. Banda became increasingly autocratic, making himself president for life in 1971. Opponents were jailed, sent into exile, or killed. The foreign
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press was barred from entering the country. In addition to gaining almost total control of Malawi’s economics, Banda also made economic trade ties with South Africa. During apartheid in South Africa, Malawi was the country’s only African public trade partner. Following rioting and the suspension of Western aid in 1992, Banda had no choice but to abandon the idea of one-party rule and even his life presidency in 1993. Open democratic elections were held in 1994, and Bakili Muluzi easily defeated Banda. Calculations report Banda accumulated over $320 million in personal assets during his rule. Another calculation reports that during his rule, over 250,000 people went missing or were murdered in connection with the government. Further reading: Baker, Colin A. State of Emergency: Crisis in Central Africa, Nyasaland 1959–1960. New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 1997; Lwanda, John Lloyd. Kamuzu Banda of Malawi: A Study in Promise, Power, and Paralysis. Glasgow: Dudu Nsomba Publications, 1995; Short, Philip. Banda. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974; Williams, T. David. Malawi, The Politics of Despair. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978. Melissa Benne
Bandung Conference (Asian-African Conference) The Bandung Conference, or Asian-African Conference, attended by 29 primarily newly independent nations, was held in 1955. The Indonesian leader Ahmed Sukarno hosted the conference of so-called Third World nations, most of which had become independent after World War II and were generally poor, agricultural, and economically underdeveloped. They represented over half the world’s population. India’s leader Jawaharlal Nehru played a key role in the conference that adopted his principles of opposing imperialism and focusing on the development of local economies rather than reliance on either the Western world led by the United States or the Soviet bloc dominated by the Soviet Union. Participants of the conference also raised issues of race, religion, and world peace. Most were, however, authoritarian in their political orientations. The Chinese prime minister, Zhou Enlai (Chou En-lai), was another key spokesperson at the conference. Aware of the different political and economic approaches of the participants, Zhou wisely did not
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push an aggressive communist program and succeeded in establishing ties with other Asian and African leaders. Other leaders at the conference included Kwame Nkrumah, prime minister of the Gold Coast (Ghana); Ho Chi Minh, the North Vietnamese prime minister; and President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt. The nations of North Africa also attended and condemned French imperialism. Nasser spoke about the role of Pan-Arabism and Pan-Africanism as well as the cause of Palestinian self-determination. Nasser, Nehru, and President Tito of Yugoslavia subsequently became personal friends and exchanged state visits with one another. Many of the participants of the Bandung Conference became leaders of the Nonaligned Movement in the early 1960s. The Nonaligned Movement sought to steer a middle or neutral course between the United States and the Soviet Union in the cold war. Neither superpower endorsed the Nonaligned Movement, although the United States tended to be more hostile to the neutralism of nations seeking to maximize their own benefits rather than adopting policies that mirrored that of either superpower. Many leaders of African and Asian nations attended a conference in both Bandung and Jakarta marking the 50th anniversary of the conference in 2005. See also Third World/Global South. Further reading: Adjibolosoo, Senya B. S. K., and Benjamin Ofori-Amoah, eds. Addressing Misconceptions About Africa’s Development: Seeing Beyond the Veil. New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1998; Wright, Richard. The Color Curtains. Oxford: University of Mississippi, 1994. 1st ed., 1956. Janice J. Terry
Bangladesh, People’s Republic of Bangladesh—officially known as the People’s Republic of Bangladesh—is a country of 55,598 square miles in South Asia. Bangladesh translates as the “Country of Bengal.” Geographically Bangladesh shares a small border with Myanmar in the southeast, and the rest is surrounded by India except for the Bay of Bengal to the south. Bangladesh, whose capital is Dhaka, had an estimated 2005 population of over 141,800,000. Officially the government is a parliamentary republic that declared independence from Pakistan on March 26, 1971. (The total population of Bangladesh recently ranked eighth in the world but the land area 94th. Hence the
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population density ranks near the top of all countries in the world. Its climate is marked by frequent monsoons and cyclones.) The partition of India in 1947 resulted in the division of Bengal according to religion. The western section of Bengal went to India and the eastern to Pakistan as a province that would become East Pakistan. During the 1960s, East Pakistan began to push for autonomy. A 1970 cyclone, according to many experts, may have acted as a tipping point in the push for an independent East Pakistan. Many charged that the central government responded poorly to the disaster. Unrest spread when the Awami League and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman won a majority in parliamentary elections but were not permitted to take office. These events led to the Bengali Liberation War that lasted for nine months. Support from Indian armed forces in December of 1971 led to independence and the establishment of Bangladesh. Politically Bangladesh has two major parties—the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Bangladesh Awami League. The BNP gains support from a number of radical Islamic parties including Jamaat-eIslami Bangladesh and Islami Oikya Jot. The rivalry between the BNP and the Awami League has often led to protests and violence. Students are quite active in politics and reflect the historical legacy of liberation politics. In February of 2005 two Islamic parties— Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB) and Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB)—were banned after a series of terrorist attacks and bombings. Bangladesh is located on the Ganges Delta. Most of Bangladesh is no more than 10 meters above sea level. Therefore some scientists suggest that a rise of the water only one meter above sea level would flood approximately 10 percent of the land in the country. The country is underdeveloped and overpopulated, with recent per capita income of only approximately $440. World Bank reports, however, have praised Bangladesh for progress in literacy, gains in education, and the reduction of population growth. Between 1990 and 1996 the economy grew at an annual rate of 5 percent. Its economic development is stymied by cyclones and floods, inefficient state enterprises, lack of power as well as corruption, and a rapidly growing population. See also Gandhi, Indira. Further reading: Baujyan, Md. Abdul Wadud. Emergence of Bangladesh and Role of Awami League. New Delhi: Vikas, 1982; Baxter, C. Bangladesh, From Nation to a State. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997; Franda, Marcus. Bangladesh: The First Decade. New Delhi: South Asian Publishers,
1982; O’Donnell, Charles Peter. Bangladesh: Biography of a Muslim Nation. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984; Session, Richard, and Leo E. Rose. War and Secession: Pakistan, India, and the Creation of Bangladesh. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990. Matthew H. Wahlert
Bay of Pigs In April 1961 putting into effect a plan initially formulated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) under the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration, U.S. President John F. Kennedy authorized the Bay of Pigs invasion to topple Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro. The plan was for a U.S.-trained and equipped force of Cuban exiles to invade Playa Girón in the Bahía de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs) on the south coast and spark a popular uprising against Castro, which would overthrow his regime and end Cuba’s Communist experiment. Ill-conceived from its inception, and plagued by mishaps and missteps, the invasion failed, becoming a major foreign policy embarrassment for Kennedy and solidifying popular support for Castro within Cuba. A few months later, Cuban revolutionary leader Che Guevara thanked a Kennedy aide for the invasion, which Guevara claimed “enabled [us] to consolidate” the revolution and “transformed [us] from an aggrieved little country to an equal.” The Bay of Pigs fiasco also had major repercussions for the cold war, helping to precipitate the Cuban missile crisis, convincing the Kremlin that Kennedy was weak and indecisive, and steeling Kennedy’s resolve to stand up to the perceived menace of global communism. Operational planning for the invasion began in March 1960, headed by Vice President Richard Nixon. This was in the wake of the successful CIAsponsored incursions into Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954), which resulted in the installation of governments friendly to the United States. The CIA secretly recruited a Cuban exile force of some 1,000 men, called Brigade 2506, which underwent training in south Florida and Guatemala. The original landing site near Trinidad, Cuba, was later changed to the Bay of Pigs. Operations began on April 15 with a failed effort to destroy the Cuban Revolutionary Air Force. Two days later, four privately chartered ships transported 1,511 Cuban exiles to the Bay of Pigs, accompanied by CIA-owned landing crafts carrying supplies. Fighting was fierce and lasted for four days (April 17–21). Casualties are estimated at 2,000 to 5,000
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Cubans and 200–300 invading exiles. Kennedy refused to send in air support or the marines, fearing the consequences of clear evidence of direct U.S. involvement. The Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces soon killed or captured most of the invading force. Soon afterward, 1,209 captive exiles were put on trial. Around 20 were executed or otherwise killed, the remainder being released within two years in exchange for $53 million in medicine and food. The botched invasion was a major blow to the Kennedy administration and gave a major boost to Castro at home and abroad. Kennedy’s vacillating leadership during the Bay of Pigs prompted Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to challenge the U.S. administration more directly by placing nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba, leading to the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962. Until his assassination in November 1963, Kennedy endeavored to demonstrate his strength in confronting the Soviet Union and its allies in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, a foreign policy stance attributable in large part to the Bay of Pigs debacle. Further reading: Goodwin, Richard. “Memorandum for the President, Conversation with Commandante Ernesto Che Guevara.” August 22, 1961, The National Security Archive, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/bayofpigs/ (accessed January 19, 2007); Kornbluh, Peter, ed. Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba. New York: The New Press, 1998; Wyden, Peter. Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979. Michael J. Schroeder
Beat movement Every generation has its own avant-garde movement, and the Beats were the avant-garde of the 1950s in the United States, providing an acerbic critique of what they believed was a bland, conformist, and frivolous society. The writers associated with the movement had a disproportionate influence for their numbers. They worked outside traditional creative forms and behavior, placing immense value on personal freedom and spontaneity and viewing themselves as poets in a philistine nation. They used their immediate raw experience—sometimes drug fueled—as the basis for their writing, and used patterns of plain American speech but also adopted the rhythms of progressive jazz and bebop. The movement began in 1945, when Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, students at Columbia Universi-
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ty, met William S. Burroughs in New York City. The movement got its name from an article that John Clellon Brown, a novelist of the movement, wrote for the New York Times in 1952. In the article Brown talked of a “new vision” invented from the everyday surroundings of the writers that sustained their “perfect craving to believe” in the U.S. promise of freedom in the tense cold war years. The movement made headlines in 1956 when Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a poet and the proprietor of San Francisco’s City Lights Bookstore, published Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems, which was promptly seized by a customs agent and became the basis for an obscenity trial. Howl would sell 100,000 copies in the next 10 years. The same year, Kerouac’s On the Road, written in 1951 on teletype paper as a single 120-footlong paragraph, became a best seller. Burroughs published Naked Lunch in 1960. It had been impounded when published in serial form, but was declared not obscene a year later. The Beat writers were not taken seriously by many outside observers. Critics in the print media—and there were many—called the group “beatniks,” a term created by San Francisco columnist Herb Caen, suggesting an unsavory connection to the Soviet Union’s shocking 1957 launch of Sputnik. Mainstream media portrayed them as hipsters and slackers: the men wearing goatees and sunglasses and carrying a book of poetry, the women with long straight hair and heavy eye makeup. Although the principal figures of the movement had scattered by the early 1960s, Beat remained a fully realized subculture in urban areas like Greenwich Village and the Venice District of Los Angeles. In San Francisco, the Beat movement had left its haunts in North Beach and relocated to a multiracial working-class neighborhood farther west, called Haight-Ashbury, leading commentators to believe that the Beat ethos was responsible for the “hippie” movement of the late 1960s. The Beat movement did inform the politics of the New Left to a degree, and it can be credited with creating the atmosphere of freedom of expression in which the protest movements of the 1960s developed. Further reading: Tytell, John. Naked Angels: Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991; Watson, Steven. The Birth of the Beat Generation: Visionaries, Rebels and Hipsters, 1944–1960. New York: Pantheon Books, 1995. David Miller Parker
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Berlin blockade/airlift
Berlin blockade/airlift The Berlin blockade was a diplomatic crisis and military operation during the cold war precipitated by the Soviet Union’s blockade of the city of Berlin from June 18, 1948, to May 12, 1949, and the subsequent relief effort launched by the United States, the United Kingdom, and France to provide provisions for the western half of the city. The Berlin blockade was one of the first major diplomatic crises of the cold war. The Western Allies’ ability to provide for the city proved to be a major diplomatic victory and ensured the creation of a pro-Western West German state. However, it also ensured the division of Germany and Berlin for the next four decades. The diplomatic struggle over Berlin in 1948–49 had its origins in the final months of World War II and the agreements made among the Allied powers over the division of postwar Germany. Germany’s capital, Berlin, although deep within the proposed Soviet zone, would also be divided into four sectors of occupation. Although each power would be given sole control of its respective zone, an Allied Control Council based in Berlin would be assembled to coordinate and plan policy for all of Germany. These plans were made under the assumption that the occupation of Germany would be temporary and that Germany would be reunified relatively soon after the war’s end. Critically, the agreements were also made under the assumption of continued inter-Allied cooperation. Within days of Nazi Germany’s defeat, the Soviets undertook efforts to ensure the dominance of sympathetic German communists in their zone, especially in Berlin, which the Soviets claimed was an integral part of their zone. Their overall aim was the reunification of a pro-communist German state, a goal that placed it at odds with the Western Allies. In 1946 the Soviet Union sponsored the forced merger of the German Communist Party and the Social Democrats (SPD) of its zone into the Socialist Unity Party (SED). Censorship of the press was instituted and members of noncommunist parties were frequently arrested in the Soviet zone. In Berlin agitators working for the SED frequently disrupted the meetings of the democratically elected city council. In 1946 the election of the Social Democrat Ernst Reuter to the office of lord mayor of Berlin was vetoed by the Soviets. However, the Soviets were unable to gain control of Berlin outside their zone or the rest of Germany. Over the course of the next three years, hopes of inter-Allied cooperation quickly faded as it became
increasingly apparent that neither the Soviets nor the Western Allies would come to an agreement on either a postwar settlement or reunifying Germany. In 1947 the British and the United States united their two zones to create the Bizone, or Bizonia. Although it was created as an economic union, the Bizone would eventually form the nucleus of what was to become West Germany. In the spring of 1948—the three Western Allies—along with Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg— assembled at the London Conference to plan for the future of the three west German zones. In 1948 with reunification unlikely, the British and the Americans made moves to sponsor the creation of a Western-oriented German state in their zones. Together with the French they created the deutsche mark to replace the inflated reichsmark. This currency reform took effect in the three western zones and the three western sectors of Berlin. The Soviets argued that this violated postwar agreements made at the Potsdam Conference and their rights to all of Berlin. They subsequently ordered a blockade of all rail, road, and barge traffic into and out of the three western sectors of Berlin. The Soviets’ aim was to halt the creation of a West German state and force the Western Allies out of Berlin. It became apparent to the Allied powers that any compromise or appearance of backing down before Soviet intimidation would be diplomatically disastrous. Although several U.S. generals argued that Berlin was not strategically important enough to risk a confrontation and pressed for withdrawal, President Harry S. Truman and Secretary of State George C. Marshall felt that Berlin was critical to maintaining a strong front against the spread of communism. The Western Allies affirmed their support for their respective sectors in Berlin. However, there were few actions that they could take. With only 15,000 Allied troops in West Berlin, a fight was not possible. General Clay advocated using an armed convoy to break the blockade. But both the U.S. State Department and the Pentagon saw this as both too risky and unworkable. The option of an airlift became increasingly attractive, as it would demonstrate Allied determination to remain in Berlin and provide it with much-needed provisions and supplies. Also, whereas the rights for land access to Berlin were left undefined, the Western Allies and the Soviets had concluded an agreement guaranteeing access by air. Thus the likelihood of war resulting from an airlift was much smaller than if the Allies were to force the blockade. Between June 1948 and May 1949 almost all the provisions for the western zones of Berlin were shipped
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The “Last Vittles” flight left Rhein Main Air Base on September 30, 1949, as sister planes of the airlift flew overhead in formation, marking the end of a dramatic chapter in air history, the Berlin airlift.
in by air, using aircraft such as the C-47 Dakota and C-54 Skymaster. The operation was given the code name “Vittles” and was commanded by General William H. Tunner. Tunner, who had experience transporting goods over the Himalayas during World War II, organized an extremely complex operation. During the summer months the airlift was able to provide only between 3,000 and 4,000 tons of goods a day. By the onset of winter, Vittles was providing between 5,000 and 6,000 tons a day. The Allies were also blessed by a winter marked by frequently clear skies. During the spring of 1949 an aircraft landed at one of the three airports in the western zone once every two minutes. The citizens of Berlin greatly appreciated the Allied efforts and many West Berliners aided in distributing supplies throughout the city. Children called the planes Rosinenbombers (“Raisin Bombers”), and the name became a popular appellation for the aircraft throughout the city. Ernst Reuter, unofficially mayor of the western sectors and spokesman for the western half of the city, made great efforts to improve morale and win world sympathy for the city. What supplies the airlift could not provide were often
found on the black market in the east and through legal East-West trade. By the spring of 1949 it had become apparent that the western sectors could be sustained with the necessary provisions, so long as the Soviet military did not interfere. However, it had come at a cost: 31 Americans, 40 Britons, and 5 Germans lost their lives to airrelated accidents during the course of the airlift. On May 12, the Soviets, aware they would neither force the Western Allies to back down on the issue of currency reform nor end their support for a West German state, ended the blockade. Fearful that the Soviets might try to renew the blockade, the Allies continued airlifting provisions into September of 1949. The blockade was a disastrous diplomatic defeat for the Soviet Union. In the short-term it had failed to accomplish its two primary goals: to prevent the creation of a pro-Western German state and to expel the Allies from Berlin. The French, who had initially opposed the creation of a western Germany, joined their zone to the Bizone in 1949. That same year, both the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic were proclaimed.
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The chief long-term effect was the prolonged division of Germany. The Western Allies had confronted the Soviets and had maintained their commitments without having to resort to armed action. The blockade also proved damaging to world opinion of the Soviet Union. Berlin, long perceived as a bastion of German-Prussian militarism, had been transformed into a symbol of freedom. The allied presence in Berlin would be the source of almost constant difficulty for the East German state, as it provided an enclave of Western liberalism and economic prosperity that was a constant source of enticement for the citizens of the communist state. West Berlin would be a popular destination for East German emigrants over the course of the next decade, their massive flight from the east stopped only by the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961. See also cold war. Further reading: Eisenberg, Carolyn. Drawing the Line: The American Decision to Divide Germany, 1944–1949. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996; Gaddis, John Lewis. The Cold War: A New History. New York: Penguin Press, 2005; Haydock, Michael. City Under Siege: The Berlin Blockade and Airlift, 1948–1949. Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 1999; Large, David Clay. Berlin. Berlin: Basic Books, 2000; Parrish, Thomas. Berlin in the Balance, 1945–1949: The Blockade, Airlift, the First Major Battle of the Cold War. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1999; Trachtenberg, Marc. A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945–1963. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999. Nicholas J. Schlosser
Betancourt, Rómulo
(1908–1981) Venezuelan president One of the leading figures of 20th-century Venezuelan history, Rómulo Betancourt is generally credited with playing a pivotal role in helping to establish viable and sustainable democratic institutions in Venezuela that endured from his second presidency (1959–64) to the 2000s. A moderate social reformer and forerunner of latter-day Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez in his advocacy of populist social democracy focusing on the needs of the poor, Betancourt founded the political party Democratic Action (Acción Democrática, AD) in 1941, which would play a major role in subsequent Venezuelan political life. Threading a difficult line between the far Left, the far Right, and the omnipresent specter of
U.S. intromission in this oil-rich country, Betancourt contributed in enduring ways to the institutionalization of Venezuelan democracy. Born in the town of Guatire in the state of Miranda to a family of modest means, he starting working at 14 years of age to put himself through high school, college, and law school. In 1928 he participated in student protests against the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez, events marking him as a leading member of the “Generation of 28” dedicated to democratization and social reform. After being jailed by the Gómez regime he went into exile and became active in various leftist political groups, including the Communist Party of Costa Rica. At age 23 he penned the Plan of Barranquilla, a Marxist-inspired document outlining his vision of his homeland’s political future. After Gómez’s death in 1936, he returned clandestinely to Venezuela and became engaged in political activity against the military regime. In 1940 he went into exile in Chile, where he published Venezuelan Problems (Problemas Venezolanos). A year later he returned to Venezuela and founded AD, gathering around him a team committed to reform that formed the nucleus of the party and skillfully using the press and other media to disseminate his ideas. On October 19, 1945, a coalition of AD reformers and disgruntled army officers overthrew the military regime and installed Betancourt as president of a provisional government. During his first presidency (1945– 48), Betancourt’s government instituted a wide range of political, economic, and social reforms, including universal suffrage; mechanisms for free and fair elections; an accord with foreign oil companies that guaranteed a reasonable profit, decent wages, and ensured labor peace; agrarian reform; expansion of public education and public health facilities; and related initiatives. Declining to run for a second successive term, in 1948 he transferred power to his successor, the novelist and activist Rómulo Gallegos. Later that year, in December, the military in collusion with conservative elements overthrew the Gallegos government, ruling Venezuela for the next 10 years under General Marcos Pérez Jiménez. In 1958 a resurgent coalition of reformers and army officers overthrew the Jiménez regime, installing a democratic AD-dominated government, with Betancourt again as president, which broadened and deepened the reforms of the 1940s. Since 1958 Venezuela has been ruled by a succession of democratically elected governments. Surviving an assassination attempt
Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX)
by Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo in 1960, and promulgating the Betancourt Doctrine that denied diplomatic recognition to regimes coming to power by military force, Betancourt died on September 28, 1981, in Doctor’s Hospital in New York City. Further reading: Alexander, Robert Jackson. Rómulo Betancourt and the Transformation of Venezuela. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1982; Coronil, Fernando. The Magical State: Nature, Money, and Modernity in Venezuela. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Michael J. Schroeder
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is a nationalist party of India. It grew out of a Hindu nationalist organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, National Volunteer Organization), which was founded in 1925 by K. B. Hedgewar as a reaction to Muslim fundamentalism. That organization was dedicated to propagating orthodox Hindu religious practices and building Hindu unity. In 1947 upon independence the Indian subcontinent was divided into two separate states, India and Pakistan. Although most Muslims remained in Pakistan and most Hindus stayed in India, some Muslims lived in India while some Hindus continued living in Pakistan. This situation, along with a territorial dispute over the Kashmir region, created tensions between the two nations. In 1951 Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS)—a political wing of RSS that grew during the 1950s and 1960s— was established. In 1971 East Pakistan seceded and created a new nation, Bangladesh. The BJS supported the movement for the creation of Bangladesh. In 1977 the BJS joined the Janata Party, a coalition of opposition parties that defeated Indira Gandhi and the Congress Party in parliamentary elections and formed a government that lasted through the end of 1979, when Gandhi returned to the government. In 1980 BJS was renamed and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was born. The principles of the BJP are inspired by Hindu nationalism and the main objectives are to build up India as a strong, unified, and prosperous nation. In 1984 the BJP separated from the RSS; it became the main opposition to the Congress Party. In the 1991 elections the BJP became an effective opposition party
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winning so many seats that the Congress Party had to govern with a coalition. In 1996 the BJP emerged as the largest party in Parliament. When parliamentary elections were held in 1998, again the BJP and some opposition parties won the largest number of seats and formed a government. This government lasted only one year but during that time the administration fulfilled an electoral promise and carried out the country’s first nuclear tests, making India a nuclear power. As a consequence, Pakistan also conducted nuclear tests, making both countries nuclear. The BJP administration faced a new conflict with Pakistan whose soldiers had occupied ground on the Indian side of the line of control demarcated by the United Nations in Kashmir. However, peace was restored in 2001. Under the BJP government, India’s economy became decentralized and market-oriented with privatizations of government corporations, increasing foreign investment, and the liberalization of trade under World Trade Organization rules. There was improvement in infrastructure and production and the middle class grew. However, there was little improvement for the rural and poor classes. In February 2002 a series of violent incidents in Gujarat State discredited the BJP government. Many activists and members of the BJP were accused of leading the violence against the Muslim minority in that state. In the 2004 elections the Congress Party coalition won the elections and the BJP became the opposition party. Further reading: Blank, Jonah. “Kashmir: Fundamentalism Takes Root.” Foreign Affairs (November–December 1999); Chhibber, Pradeep K. Democracy Without Associations: Transformation of the Party System and Social Cleavages in India. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001; Sil, Rudra. “India.” Part one, chapter 8 in Comparative Politics, Interest, Identities and Institutions in a Changing Global Order. J. Kopstein and M. Lichbach, eds. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Verónica M. Ziliotto
Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX) (1927– ) Thai king
Bhumibol Adulyadej, Rama IX of the Chakri dynasty, is the reigning king of Thailand and the longestruling monarch in the world. His bespectacled visage is
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a familiar sight in Thailand, where photographs of the king and his queen consort, Sirikit, adorn the walls of many homes. Political developments ended absolute monarchy in Thailand in 1932, and Bhumibol’s uncle King Pradjadhipok abdicated three years later, elevating 10-yearold Ananda Mahidol to the throne. On June 9, 1946, the 21-one-year-old King Ananda was found in the royal chamber dead of a gunshot wound. Three palace aides were eventually executed for their involvement. Bhumibol Adulyadej, still a minor, ascended to the throne the next day but returned to Switzerland to continue his education. In 1950 Bhumibol returned temporarily for his wedding and official coronation. He married his fiancée, the 17-year-old M. R. Sirikit Kityakara, whom he had met in Paris while her father was the Thai ambassador to France. The royal couple returned to take up permanent residence in Thailand in 1951. Between 1951 and 1957, King Bhumibol and the royal household found themselves subject to a “royal containment” policy. The government, headed by the antiroyalist prime minister Phibun and dominated by the military, vigorously circumscribed the influence of the monarch, restricting him primarily to a symbolic role in traditional and religious ceremonies. The situation changed in 1957 when a rival military faction, led by Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat, worked with a royalist faction to topple the Phibun government. Sarit and his coconspirators apparently had sought an audience with the king to inform him of their plans. In turn, King Bhumibol designated Sarit the military protector of Bangkok during the period of upheaval. This marked the beginning of a partnership between Sarit and the king. Field Marshal Sarit and the king enjoyed a cordial working relationship. Sarit, who appreciated the value of promoting King Bhumibol both as a rallying point in Thai political life and as an antidote to communist influence, astutely included the monarch as a junior partner in governance. Consequently, King Bhumibol’s role in Thailand became increasingly visible and influential. He and Queen Sirikit toured the country, visited foreign nations, and in general became prominent symbols of Thailand. His popularity in the country remains unquestioned. Even though the king is generally above politics, he has used his stature to intervene in political crises. In 1992 a political crisis brewed when demonstrators protested the appointment as prime minister a leader of the military coup that had ousted a democratically
elected government the previous year. The king intervened, mediating a peaceful resolution to the crisis. King Bhumibol’s popularity in the country is also the result of his and the royal family’s efforts to improve the livelihood of ordinary Thai citizens. The king and other members of his family have been closely involved with agricultural, environmental, and social welfare projects that have endeared them to the populace. Further reading: Baker, Chris, and Pasuk Phongpaichit. A History of Thailand. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005; Horn, Robert. “A Royal Dressing Down.” Time (158, no. 25); Stockwell, Tony. “Thailand’s Modernising Monarchs.” History Today 50, no. 7 (July 2000); SuwannathatPian, Kobkua. Kings, Country and Constitutions: Thailand’s Political Development, 1932–2000. London: Routledge Curzon, 2003. Soo Chun Lu
Bhutto, Benazir
(1953–2007 ) Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto was the first female to lead a modern Muslim country; she was prime minister of Pakistan from December 1988 to August 1990 and again from October 1993 to November 1996. Bhutto’s father was Zulfikar Bhutto, who founded the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). Benazir Bhutto was born on June 21, 1953, in Karachi, Pakistan. She attended Harvard’s Radcliffe College starting in 1969 and graduated, cum laude, in 1973. She then attended Lady Margaret Hall at Oxford University, where she studied politics, philosophy, and economics until 1977. She was elected president of the Oxford Union and became the first Asian woman to lead their debating society. She returned to Pakistan in 1977. Shortly after her return to Pakistan, a military coup led by General Zia overthrew her father’s government, imprisoned him, and hanged him two years later. Over the next seven years, until her exile in 1984, she was imprisoned several times because of her opposition to Zia. In January 1984 she went into exile in London. From there she worked to build the PPP’s strength and in January 1986, after martial law was lifted, she returned. Because Pakistan is a Muslim country, she decided that she needed to be married and arranged a marriage to Asif Ali Zardari in December 1987.
With Zia’s death in August 1988, elections were held and Bhutto ran for prime minister. The PPP was unable to win a majority of the seats in parliament, but did put together a coalition government with Bhutto as the prime minister. Bhutto and the PPP worked to improve the conditions of the poor of Pakistan as well as to improve social justice in the country. She also believed in a free economy and private control of business. She worked to improve human rights in Pakistan. Throughout Bhutto’s term, the opposition tried to get her removed from office. Their attempts had been unsuccessful until 1990 when violence broke out in several cities in Pakistan. This violence, along with support from the military, gave the Pakistani president the excuse he needed to dismiss the government. Thus on August 6, 1990, Bhutto was removed from office and charged with corruption, nepotism, and misuse of her office. In elections in October the PPP lost all but a few of the seats it held in parliament. Bhutto spent the next several years improving her reputation. The government that replaced her coalition proved unable to deal with the problems of Pakistan and new elections were held in 1993. The PPP, while holding a large number of seats, did not have a majority. When a PPP candidate was elected president, it appeared that the government would be stable. However, corruption and criminal activity by politicians continued to be a problem. She was dismissed as prime minister in 1996 and went into exile. Bhutto vowed she would triumph in new elections scheduled for February 1997, but she lost to Nawaz Sharif, whom she had replaced in 1993. In January 1998 corruption charges against Bhutto and her husband widened. Bhutto denied the charges and said they were politically motivated, but during her five years in office, Pakistan’s treasury was drained, and she was unable to deliver the programs she had promised. In spite of the charges, Bhutto maintained her position as leader of Pakistan’s major opposition party, the PPP. In 1999, Bhutto fled Pakistan to avoid corruption charges, and she was convicted in absentia by a Pakistani court. In October of that year, Sharif lost power when General Pervez Musharraf took over the country in a military coup. Bhutto returned to Pakistan in 2007 after President Musharrarf granted her and others amnesty from corruption charges. She was assassinated shortly after. Further reading: Akhund, Iqbal. Trial and Error: The Advent and Eclipse of Benazir Bhutto. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2000; Fredriksen, John C. Biographical Dictionary of Modern World Leaders: 1992 to Present. New York: Facts On File, 2003; Haqqani, Husain. Pakistan: Between
Bhutto, Zulfikar
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Zulfikar Bhutto was one of the prominent leaders of Pakistani politics and founder of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).
Mosque and Military. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005. Dallace W. Unger, Jr.
Bhutto, Zulfikar
(1928–1979) Pakistani leader Zulfikar Bhutto, one of the prominent leaders of Pakistani politics and founder of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) was born on January 5, 1928, in Larkna, Sind. He was the son of Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto, a wealthy landowner. Bhutto was close to President Muhammad Ayub Khan (1907–74) and held the important portfolio of foreign affairs. He was an excellent orator and represented Pakistan in various world capitals and the United Nations with conviction. He left the company
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of Ayub after the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 and formed the PPP on November 2, 1967, in Lahore. The PPP catered to the needs of diverse constituencies in Pakistan, attracting people from various walks of life. In the political turmoil of the last days of Ayub, Bhutto and his PPP tried to oust Ayub. General Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan, the successor of Ayub, ordered the elections based on adult franchise on December 7, 1970. With the slogan “Food, Shelter and Clothing,” the PPP emerged victorious in west Pakistan, whereas the Awami League of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman gained an absolute majority in the whole of Pakistan. The PPP prevailed upon Yahya Khan in not allowing Mujibur to form a government. Bhutto called the National Assembly to prepare the third constitution for Pakistan. It became operative on August 12, 1973. The parliamentary system was adopted and the prime minister became the most powerful official. He was also the commander in chief of the armed forces. Comparative stability entered the politics of Pakistan. Pakistan also recognized the independence of Bangladesh in the first amendment of the constitution. Bhutto carried out reforms in industry, agriculture, and the civil services, and ordered the nationalization of banks along with rice, flour, and cotton mills. Bhutto had a fair amount of success in international relations. He tried his best to revive the image of Pakistan after its humiliation due to the secession of East Pakistan. He cemented the country’s relations with other Islamic countries. Under him both India and Pakistan recognized the Line of Control (LOC) that had been established after their war of 1971 and agreed to refrain from the use of force against each other. Pakistan gained back the territory lost in the war. The accords prevented any major conflagration between the two until 1999. Bhutto announced in January 1977 that elections were to be held for the National Assembly two months later. The PPP emerged victorious with 155 seats and the combined opposition; the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA) secured only 36 seats. The PNA then launched a mass movement against Bhutto, claiming that the elections were rigged. Bhutto was arrested and released a month later. In September, he was arrested on charges of authorizing the murder of an opponent three years previously. He was found guilty of murder and he was hanged on April 4, 1979. The PPP again came to power in 1988 with Benazir Bhutto the daughter of Zulfikar Bhutto, becoming prime minister.
Further reading: Akhund, Iqbal. Trial and Error. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2000; Blood, R. Peter, ed. Pakistan: A Country Study. Washington, DC: Area Handbook Series, 1995; Mukerjee, Dilip. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto: Quest for Power. Dehi: Vikas, 1972; Raza, Rafi. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Pakistan, 1967–1977. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1997; Raza, Rafi, ed. Pakistan in Perspective, 1947–1977. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1997; Syed, Anwar H. The Discourse and Politics of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992. Patit Paban Mishra
Biafran War (1967–1970) The Biafran War, also known as the Nigerian Civil War, was a political conflict waged from July 6, 1967, to January 13, 1970. It was a war rooted in ethnic conflicts between three main tribes in the country: the Igbo in the southeast, the Yoruba in the west, and the Hausa/Fulani in the north. The war came about as a result of events that followed the independence of Nigeria in 1963. In 1964 elections were held, which were afterward condemned by non-northern Nigerians as fraudulent. In January 1966 a coup d’état was staged by mostly Igbo officers that put Major General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi in power at the head of a government that gave more favor to Igbo-related officers. A countercoup was then staged by Lieutenant Colonel Murtala Mohammed that placed Lieutenant Colonel Yakubu Gowon (a northerner) in power on July 29, 1966. Because Igbos became suspect for the problems caused by the first coup, social unrest started that led to massacres of Igbo people, continuing into September of the same year. Around 30,000 Igbo civilians were killed, and over 1 million Igbos began to relocate to the southeast to escape persecution. At the same time Hausas and other non-Igbos were killed in Igbo lands, causing a counter-exodus to escape retaliation. Oil had been discovered in Nigeria in 1958, and the country’s oil industry was based in the Igbodominated southeast. Lieutenant Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, military governor of the eastern region, became the leader for the Igbo side. Based on Igbo appeals for secession from the federal government, he declared the independence of the Republic of Biafra on May 30, 1966. Unwilling to lose the oil industry, the FMG advanced into Biafra on July 6, 1967, to force Biafra back into the fold of Nigeria. The Biafran forces
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repulsed the advance, then launched a counterinvasion into FMG territories, seizing key strategic locations. At the end of 1967 however, the FMG regained these territories, and the Biafran forces were again looking for breakthroughs into Nigeria. For most of 1968 the forces were stalemated. The Biafran military enjoyed much support from foreign countries. French doctors and other volunteer groups airlifted supplies and medical assistance into Biafra. The Swedish eccentric Carl Gustav von Rosen fought as a mercenary on the Biafran side. When Biafra was declared, the country was formally recognized by only Tanzania, Zambia, Gabon, South Africa, and Ivory Coast. Other African countries refused to recognize Biafra because they were opposed to South Africa. FMG forces later took the town of Owerri, the capital of the Igbo heartland, and thought that victory was close. But Biafran forces reclaimed it later on, and the stalemate held again. By April 1969 the Biafran forces were heavily reduced, but they continued fighting. Ojukwu’s appeals for United Nations intervention in October were unsuccessful. The final push of FMG forces started in December of 1969. On January 6, 1970, Owerri again fell to the FMG. On January 10 Ojukwu admitted defeat and fled Nigeria for the Ivory Coast. He left the country to the commander of the Biafran Army, Philip Effiong, who led a delegation to Lagos and formally surrendered on January 15, 1970, thus ending the existence of Biafra. The Biafran War ended with 100,000 military casualties, while between 500,000 and 3 million Biafran civilians became casualties from starvation during the war. After the war, ethnic tensions continued to be a problem in Nigerian politics. Further reading: Draper, Michael I. Shadows: Airlift and Airwar in Biafra and Nigeria, 1967–1970. Charlottesville, VA: Howell, 2000; Global Security. “Biafran War,” http://www. globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/biafra.htm (cited September 2006); Madiebo, Alexander. The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War. Nigeria: Fourth Dimension, 1980; Okpoko, John. The Biafran Nightmare: The Controversial Role of International Relief Agencies in a War of Genocide. Enugu: Delta of Nigeria, 1986; Osaghae, Eghosa E. Crippled Giant: Nigeria Since Independence. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999; Uzokwe, Alfred O. Surviving in Biafra: The Story of the Nigerian Civil War. Lincoln: Writers Advantage, 2003. Chino Fernandez
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biblical inerrancy The doctrine of biblical inerrancy asserts that the original texts or teachings of the Bible contain no errors. The word infallibility sometimes appears as a synonym for inerrancy, but strictly speaking, the term infallibility has a slightly different sense, namely, that the claims of a religious authority cannot fail. A good case can be made that all major branches of the Christian faith historically embraced biblical inerrancy or its equivalent, yet also that the definition of biblical inerrancy took on additional connotations and significance for Protestant evangelicals in the late 19th century. Roman Catholics generally prefer to discuss religious authority in terms of the infallibility of the Church, which entails the teachings of its councils, leaders (especially the pope), and official documents, including the Bible. Eastern Orthodoxy looks particularly to the religious authority of the seven ecumenical Church councils. For some Protestants, biblical inerrancy provides a litmus test for determining who is an evangelical. Thus biblical inerrancy became the theological basis for founding both the National Association of Evangelicals (1942) and the Evangelical Theological Society (1949). While the most widely accepted evangelical confession of the 20th century, the Lausanne Covenant (1974), states that the Bible is “without error in all that it affirms,” the phrase implicitly allows some ambiguity since there are serious debates over what in fact the Bible actually affirms. Hence, while many evangelicals would agree with the doctrine of biblical inerrancy, the meaning and implications of that belief have often been contested. The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (1978) was an attempt by certain evangelical theologians to articulate clearly and delimit the meaning of biblical inerrancy. Nevertheless, there are at least four rather different senses in which the doctrine of biblical inerrancy has been understood by those who embrace it. For some, biblical inerrancy means that every propositional statement in the Bible—including statements bearing upon science or history—must be accepted as a divinely sanctioned literal truth. For others, the Bible is still in some important sense true when referring to nonreligious domains, but such references should not be pressed too literally, especially when they are merely describing human experiences of the physical world. A third approach turns the focus upon the reliability of the Bible’s religious teachings. The fourth way of understanding biblical inerrancy emphasizes the Bible’s overall purpose of bringing people into
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fellowship with God, rather than asking whether this or that proposition is true. The doctrine of biblical inerrancy is frequently defended by one or more of the following arguments: an appeal to the nature of God (God cannot lie and the Bible is his divine word), the teachings of Jesus (Christ) of Nazareth about the trustworthiness of Scripture, the Bible’s own self-authenticating claims, the threat to religious authority if the Bible is errant, or the analysis of test cases to show that apparent errors in the biblical text are instead true and that supposed contradictions are actually in harmony with each other. Further reading: Geisler, Norman L. Inerrancy. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1980; Lightner, Robert P. A Biblical Case for Total Inerrancy. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic & Professional, 1997. Timothy Paul Erdel
Black Power movement Influential from 1960 to 1976, the Black Power movement was a conscious endeavor to liberate the blacks from white political, social, and cultural institutional clutches. As a radical political philosophy, the Black Power movement advocated ethnic integrity, self-sufficiency, and self-assertion with an aim to maximize black opportunities. During a march to Mississippi, Stokley Carmichael is believed to have articulated the blueprint of the movement. Although Martin Luther King, Jr., with his philosophy of nonviolence and brotherhood, succeeded in the pursuit of equality, blacks felt that they had been alienated and discriminated against in many social institutions. It was this disappointment with King’s approach to the African-American condition that persuaded Huey Newton, Malcolm X, and Stokely Carmichael to look for an alternative model. Accordingly, they insisted on the need to advance black freedom through force. In its initial stages, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was the only organization that supported the Black Power movement. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) denounced Black Power, though it reportedly generated support later. Interestingly, the impact of the Black Power movement in America surfaced in the United Kingdom. Organizations such as the Racial Adjustment Action Society and the Universal Coloured People’s Association fervently propagated the ideologies of the
A recruiting poster for the Black Panthers, one of the best-known and militant Black Power organizations.
Black Power movement. Carmichael visited London in 1967 and was deported for inciting racial hatred. In 1966 Black Power reached new prominence in the form of the Black Panther movement. Founded in Oakland, California, in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, the Black Panthers fashioned their views after Frantz Fanon, Mao Zedong, and Malcolm X. With their “rhetoric of the gun,” the Black Panthers, like the Black Power movement, strove to advance the rights of blacks through violence and force. But the most intense and successful manifestation of the Black Power movement is the Black Arts movement. Drawing inspiration from the ideological specifics of the Black Power movement, the Black Arts movement ardently rejected white literary standards and sought to define a new black aesthetic. Prominent members of the Black Arts
Bolivian revolution (1952–1964)
movement, among others, include Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), Harold Cruse, Sonia Sanchez, Haki Madhubuti, Ed Bullins, Dudley Randall, Ed Spriggs, Nikki Giovanni, Conrad Rivers, and Mari Evans. Two prominent contributions of the Black Arts movement are the growth of theater groups and black poetry performance. Baraka, a prominent Black Arts practitioner, established Black Arts Repertory Theatre and School in Harlem. Another prominent playwright of this era was Ed Bullins. Unlike Ellison, Ed Bullins—true to the spirit of the Black Arts and Black Power movements—denied the whites in his plays. Poets such as Haki Madhubuti, Sonia Sanchez, and Angela Jackson experimented with verse forms with the intention of differentiating from white literary culture and thus asserting cultural autonomy. Though the radical political agenda of the Black Arts movement was severely criticized by the later artists, the movement’s thrust toward cultural autonomy brought black creativity to new heights. Eventually, the Black Power movement was increasingly met with violence from white counterparts. Strict government measures such as Cointelpro and IRS probes later disrupted the activities of the Black Power movement. Finally, though the Black Power movement failed to enact concrete political changes, it marked a crucial phase in the evolution of African-American politics on the eve of the civil rights era. See also Civil Rights movement, u.s. Further reading: Carson, Clayborne. In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981. Cleaver, Eldridge. Soul on Ice. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968. Dickstein, Morris. Gates of Eden: American Culture in the Sixties. New York: Basic Books, 1977. Van Deburg, William L. New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965–1975. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Wilson, William J. Power, Racism and Privilege: Race Relations in Theoretical and Sociohistorical Perspectives. New York: Free Press, 1973. Sathyaraj Venkatesan
Bolivian revolution (1952–1964) Beginning in 1952 Bolivia underwent a social and economic revolution, spearheaded by the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario, MNR), a political party founded in 1941 and led by the economist Victor Paz Estenssoro and the lawyer and former president’s son Hernán Siles Zuazo. The roots of the revolution can be traced to Bolivia’s
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humiliating defeat by Paraguay in the Chaco War (1932– 35); decades of military dictatorship and politically exclusionary rule by the landowning and military elite; the country’s long history of class and racial inequality and extreme poverty among its mostly indigenous population; and the emergence of new leftist political forces from the early 1940s, particularly its labor unions, peasant leagues, and Marxist-oriented political parties. Coming to power through both electoral victory and popular mobilizations, after 1952 the MNR instituted a range of far-reaching social and economic reforms. By the late 1950s the revolutionary process stalled in consequence of mounting conservative opposition, growing factionalism and corruption within the MNR, and U.S. support to conservative elements. In 1964 the MNR was overthrown in a military coup. The Bolivian revolution left an enduring legacy, with much of the popular unrest and indigenous political organizing of the 1990s and 2000s finding important antecedents in the revolutionary period half a century before. Coming to power on April 16, 1952, after a wave of strikes and street protests, the MNR under Paz Estenssoro launched an ambitious program of land, labor, and social reform. Establishing universal suffrage in July, the regime expanded the electorate from around 200,000 to over one million voters. It also slashed the size and power of the military. In October it nationalized the country’s largest tin mines and established the state-run Mining Corporation of Bolivia (Corporación Minera de Bolivia, COMIBOL). The act fulfilled a longtime goal of the Union Federation of Bolivian Tin Workers (Federación Sindical de Trabajadores Mineros de Bolivia, FSTMB), founded in 1944 and led by Juan Lechín, the country’s largest labor union with some 60,000 members. Following the MNR’s assumption of power, in 1952 Bolivian trade unions formed the Bolivian Workers’ Center (Central Obrera Boliviana, COB), with the FSTMB as its largest affiliate. The COB exercised a major political influence throughout the period of MNR rule. In August 1953 the MNR initiated a sweeping program of agrarian reform in an attempt to eliminate forced labor and address the country’s extremely unequal landowning patterns. Before 1953, 6 percent of landowners controlled upwards of 90 percent of the nation’s arable land, and 60 percent of landowners controlled 0.2 percent. While not all of the provisions of the 1953 Agrarian Reform Law were implemented, in later years land ownership became significantly less unequal. Peasant leagues, forming armed militias, exerted considerable influence
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Bosch, Juan
on the revolutionary government, partly through their representation in the new Ministry of Peasant Affairs. By the end of Paz Estenssoro’s first term (1952–56), the revolutionary process had slowed in consequence of mounting opposition from conservative elements, growing polarization within the multiclass ruling coalition, economic decline in the tin and farming industries, and skyrocketing inflation due to increased government spending. Under the presidency of Siles Zuazo (1956– 60), the United States stepped up its efforts to moderate the regime through increased flows of economic assistance, heightening the country’s political polarization. By Paz Estenssoro’s second term (1960–64), the MNR’s more radical elements faced mounting internal and external opposition. In 1964 a resurgent military overthrew the regime, followed by a series of military dictatorships that ruled until 1982. Further reading: Klein, Herbert S. A Concise History of Bolivia. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003; Morales, Waltraud Q. A Brief History of Bolivia. New York: Facts On File, 2003. Michael J. Schroeder
Bosch, Juan
(1909–2001) Dominican president Poet, scholar, educator, activist, politician, and the first democratically elected president of the Dominican Republic after the long dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo, Juan Emilio Bosch y Gaviño is most remembered for championing the rights and dignity of ordinary Dominicans through his writings and his progressive liberaldemocratic politics. His tenure as president was brief, lasting only seven months—from February to September 1963—when he was overthrown by a coalition of conservative forces. He nonetheless continued to play a major role in Dominican politics, running for president and losing repeatedly to U.S.-supported candidates (1978, 1982, 1986, 1990, 1994), becoming the standard-bearer of the country’s populist left and pushing the national political discourse toward the promotion of liberal democracy, civil rights, and the political enfranchisement of the poor and working class. Born on June 30, 1909, in the Dominican town of La Vega to a Puerto Rican mother and Catalonian father, at age 28 Bosch went into exile in Cuba to escape the repression of the Trujillo regime. Two years later, in 1939 in Havana, he cofounded the Dominican
Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Dominicano, PRD), which would later play a major role in Dominican politics. Devoting much of his time to poetry and writing, in 1933 he published his first collection of stories, Camino Real; from 1935 to 1963 he published no fewer than 13 novels, anthologies, and works of nonfiction (from Indios [1935] and La mañosa [1936] to David, biografía de un rey [1963]). After Trujillo’s assassination on May 30, 1961, he returned to the Dominican Republic, and, after a tempestuous interlude characterized by widespread popular mobilization and abiding U.S. concern relating to the cold war and the radicalization of the Cuban revolution, Bosch was elected president in the national elections of December 20, 1962, with 64 percent of the vote. Assuming the presidency on February 27, 1963, he embarked on an ambitious program of economic, political, and social reform. His administration promulgated a new liberal constitution in April that secularized the government; guaranteed civil rights for all citizens; imposed civilian control on the military; and inaugurated a far-reaching program of agrarian reform. The reforms alienated the most powerful sectors of Dominican society, including the Catholic Church, the military, industrialists, and large landowners. In the context of the intensifying cold war, the stage was set for a U.S.supported conservative coup, which came on September 25, 1963. Going into exile in Puerto Rico, he returned to the Dominican Republic in September 1965 after the U.S. military intervention of April that ended an emerging civil war between pro-PRD and anti-PRD factions. He ran again for president in 1966, but was defeated by the U.S.-supported Joaquín Balaguer. While he never regained the presidency, he became renowned for his left-populist rhetoric, the acuity of his social criticism, and his determination to improve the lot of ordinary Dominicans. In 1973 he founded a new political party, the Dominican Liberation Party (Partido de la Liberación Dominicana, PLD), which since the mid-1990s has drifted to the center-right. The author of at least 36 publications translated into many languages, and popularly revered as a national hero, he died on November 1, 2001, in Santo Domingo. Further reading: Atkins, G. Pope. Arms and Politics in the Dominican Republic. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1981; Chester, Eric Thomas. Rag-Tags, Scum, Riff-Raff, and Commies: The U.S. Intervention in the Dominican Republic, 1965– 1966. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001; Hartlyn, Jonathan. The Struggle for Democratic Politics in the Dominican
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Republic. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. Michael J. Schroeder
Bourguiba, Habib
(1903–2000) Tunisian leader Habib Bourguiba, known as the Supreme Warrior, was born in Monastir, Tunisia, in 1903 and died in April 2000 while under house arrest in his hometown. Bourguiba attended Sadiqi College in Tunis, where he graduated in 1924. He then went to France to study law and political science at the University of Paris. Upon graduation in 1927 Bourguiba returned to Tunisia; a year later he was writing for multiple political newspapers on issues involving Tunisian nationalism. Bourguiba was a member of the Executive Committee of the Destour Party, but his disagreements with the party’s political approach led to his resignation. He formed the breakaway Neo-Destour Party in 1934. The French colonial authorities reacted to Bourguiba’s growing power by exiling him for two years. This would prove to be the first of many times Bourguiba would be imprisoned and released by the French during the struggle for Tunisian independence. In April 1938 pro-nationalist demonstrations broke out in Tunisia and the French authorities opened fire on the crowds. Shortly thereafter, Bourguiba was imprisoned by the French on charges of sedition. In 1945 as the war ended, Bourguiba embarked on a series of tours through Arab nations, the United States, and parts of Europe to publicize the Tunisian cause. When Bourguiba returned to Tunisia, he reorganized and resumed control of the Neo-Destour Party. In January 1952 armed resistance broke out in parts of Tunisia and Bourguiba was again arrested and imprisoned in France. Beleaguered by the ongoing war in Algeria, the French released Bourguiba in 1955 and granted independence to Tunisia in 1956. Bourguiba became Tunisia’s first president. He promptly embarked on a program of reform and development. Tunisia’s constitution called for a secular state. Women were granted equality, and ambitious educational and health care programs were instituted; however, early attempts to collectivize agriculture failed and economic difficulties beset the nation. Bourguiba was sympathetic to independence movements in developing countries, but his calls for negotiations with Israel in the mid-1960s led to riots in Jordan and Lebanon. In 1975 Bourguiba was named
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president for life. He was seen by many as a passionate orator with a charismatic personality but he also had a reputation as a shrewd politician who outmaneuvered his political opponents. The economy continued to decline during the 1980s as Islamist political groups gained support. As his health failed, Bourguiba seemed increasingly unable to deal with the mounting political, economic, and social problems of the nation. In November 1987 a bloodless coup led by Zine el Abidine Ben Ali took over the government and ousted Bourguiba. Ben Ali proclaimed that Bourguiba, at the age of 84, was too old and senile to serve as president. Bourguiba lived under house arrest for 13 years until his death in 2000. Although Ben Ali promised a return to democracy and held elections, he too became increasingly authoritarian and continued to rule Tunisia into the 21st century. See also Algerian revolution. Further reading: Borowiec, Andrew. Modern Tunisia: A Democratic Apprenticeship. New York: Praeger, 1998; Salem, N. Habib Bourghiba, Islam and the Creation of Tunisia. London: Croom Helm, 1984. Brian M. Eichstadt
Bracero Program (1942–1964) The Bracero Program, begun in August 1942 at the height of World War II in response to war-induced labor shortages in the United States, was a joint U.S.-Mexican agreement to bring temporary Mexican male laborers to work in the U.S. agricultural, railroad, and related industries. While the program was conceived as a temporary wartime expedient, commercial fruit, vegetable, and cotton growers in the U.S. Southwest found the program so profitable that they persuaded the U.S. Congress and Mexican governments to extend it for nearly two decades after the end of the war. In the 22 years during which the program was operational, an estimated 5 million Mexican men worked as braceros (a term roughly synonymous with “jornaleros,” or “day laborers”). Repeatedly condemned by human rights activists as abusive and exploitive, the Bracero Program had a major impact on the economic, social, and cultural history of both Mexico and the United States. The program provided millions of poor Mexicans with legal entrée into the United States, familiarizing them with the land, its people, its wage structure, and its employment opportunities. For some it provided
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Mexican workers at the border await legal employment in the United States, February 3, 1954.
an opportunity to reconnect with kin on the U.S. side of the border. After completing the terms of their contracts, many braceros opted to stay in the United States illegally or to return to Mexico and cross the border clandestinely at a later time. The program also made major contributions to the development of commercial agriculture in the U.S. Southwest. While the terms of the original agreement mandated a minimum wage of 30 cents per hour, humane working conditions, and free round-trip transportation between Mexico and sites of employment, in practice the U.S. companies hiring bracero laborers frequently failed to adhere to these requirements. Unauthorized and sometimes exorbitant deductions for food, housing, medical attention, and other necessities were common, as were abusive practices such as substandard food and housing, poor sanitary conditions, physical intimidation, and violence. The program was briefly halted in 1948 in response to a decision by Texas cotton growers to pay braceros $2.50 per hundred weight, while non-braceros earned $3.00. The Mexican government responded by suspending the program, an impasse resolved with a U.S. government apology and a new agreement in 1951 under U.S. Public Law 78 (sometimes called the “second” Bracero Program), which continued until 1964 (with successive “temporary” extensions in 1954, 1956, 1958, and 1961). Through the 1950s, an estimated 300,000 Mexicans worked as braceros annually. In order to combat illegal immigration and the tendency of many braceros
to remain in the United States without authorization, in 1954 the U.S. government launched “Operation Wetback,” a program intended to repatriate unauthorized Mexicans, which also resulted in the deportation of some U.S. citizens. By the mid-1950s such repatriations reached a high of 3.8 million. The Bracero Program is the subject of an expansive literature. The most rigorous early scholarly investigation was by the Mexican-American scholar and activist Dr. Ernesto Galarza, whose book Merchants of Labor (1964) is considered a classic in the field. Testifying repeatedly before the U.S. Congress and other government bodies, Galarza and others finally persuaded lawmakers to end the program. The program’s termination coincided with the rise of the National Farmworkers Association (later United Farmworkers of America, UFW), led by labor organizer Cesar Chavez. In many ways, the ending of the Bracero Program—and the glut of cheap migrant labor it provided—made possible the rise of the UFW. Further reading. Galarza, Ernesto. Merchants of Labor: The Mexican Bracero Story. Charlotte, CA: McNally and Loftin, 1964; Gonzalez, Gilberto G. Guest Workers or Colonized Labor?: Mexican Labor Migration to the United States. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2006. Michael J. Schroeder
Brazil, military dictatorship in (1964–1985) Following a recurring pattern in Brazilian history (1889, 1930, 1937, 1945), in 1964 a group of military officers overthrew the civilian government of João Goulart (1961–64), installing a military dictatorship that ruled for the next 21 years. The roots of the crisis prompting the coup have been traced to a confluence of events from the mid-1950s. These included a dramatic upsurge in leftist political movements, parties, and unions among urban and rural dwellers, encouraged by civilian leaders and intensifying after the 1959 Cuban revolution, combined with a growing economic crisis marked by high inflation (nearly 90 percent in 1964) and foreign debt ($3 billion), huge budget deficits ($1.1 billion in 1964); declining foreign investment, and eroding middle-class support. With U.S. backing, on March 31, 1964, a group of officers headed by General Humberto Castello Branco seized power. Castello Branco ruled as president until 1967, his principal goal economic stabilization. Reforms
introduced by his planning minister, the neo-orthodox technocrat Roberto Campos, partly achieved this aim. The regime also reformed the nation’s banking system and reduced unions’ bargaining power. From 1968 to 1974 years of the so-called Brazilian miracle, foreign investment soared, industry boomed, and the economy grew at an average annual rate of 11 percent, though inflation still averaged around 23 percent. Relatively moderate, Castello Branco and his successor, General Artur Costa e Silva (1967–69), tolerated a degree of organized dissent, though when opposition leaders launched a series of protests and strikes in 1967–68, Costa e Silva cracked down, arresting and jailing hundreds. In September 1969 he suffered a stroke and was replaced by hard-liner General Emilio Garrastazu Médici (1969–74). By 1969 there emerged in the country’s major cities more than a dozen guerrilla groups, composed of perhaps 500 members altogether and akin to the Montoneros in Argentina, that for the next four years waged a losing battle against the dictatorship. Robbing banks and kidnapping foreign diplomats, the guerrillas found inspiration in the writings of Carlos Marighela, especially his Mini-manual of the Urban Guerrilla. The years of Brazil’s Dirty War (1969–73) were marked by mass jailings, institutionalized torture, and upwards of 333 disappearances, far fewer than in neighboring Argentina and Uruguay. By 1973 the urban guerrilla groups had been eradicated. In 1974 the more moderate General Ernesto Geisel (1974–79) assumed the presidency. Inclined toward a return to civilian rule, in October he allowed opposition parties to run in congressional elections, resulting in their landslide victory, thus stalling further democratization. In the economic sphere, the steep OPEC oil price hikes in 1973 and 1979 returned Brazil to high deficits, ballooning debt, and climbing inflation, which reached 110 percent in 1980. The abundance of cheap petrodollars on world markets delayed the day of economic reckoning, but in 1981 a global recession and credit squeeze compelled Brazil to default on its commercial bank loans, decisively ending the economic boom. The fifth and last of the general-presidents was João Figueiredo (1979–85), who, facing mounting popular opposition and a ravaged economy, pledged a return to civilian rule. Local, state, and federal congressional elections in 1982 were followed by presidential elections in 1985, won by Tancredo Neves, governor of the state of Minas Gerais. Since 1985 Brazil has been governed by a succession of democratically elected governments. Further reading: Skidmore, Thomas E. Brazil: Five Centuries of Change. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999;
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———. Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 1964–85. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Michael J. Schroeder
Brezhnev, Leonid Ilyich (1906–1982) Soviet politician
On October 15, 1964, Leonid Brezhnev became first secretary (later renamed general secretary) of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), a position he held until his death on November 10, 1982. For the last five years of his life, as well as from 1960 to 1964, he was also president of the Soviet Union. As a result, during the 18 years that Brezhnev was the undisputed leader of the Soviet Union the country went through a period of economic stagnation and, although at his death it remained a superpower, its military power was being sapped by its long occupation of Afghanistan. The Soviet Union was also unable to exert as much influence in Eastern Europe as it had 20 years earlier. Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev was born in 1906 in the village of Kamenskoye in the Ukraine. It was an iron and steel center and both his grandfather and his father had worked in the iron and steel plant. After completing his education at a local school, Brezhnev also went to work in the local factories. When he was 17 he joined the Young Communist League, became interested in farm collectivization, and went to study in Kursk. He then left the Ukraine to work as a land-use specialist in Byelorussia and the Urals. When he was 25, Brezhnev returned to his hometown and studied metallurgy, graduating from the local institute in 1935. Four years later he was elected secretary of the Communist Party Committee for the Dnepropetrovsk region, at that time one of the largest industrial centers in the Soviet Union. In 1941 at the outbreak of World War II in the USSR, Brezhnev joined the army as a political officer, holding the rank of brigade commissar. In 1944 he was promoted to major general and marched with the 4th Ukrainian Army Group in the June 1945 Red Square Victory Parade. At the conclusion of the war he was put in charge of the Carpathian military district. He then became leader of the Communist Party in Moldavia, the smallest of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union, and then became a member of the party’s central committee and a candidate member of the presidium, losing all these positions in the shakeup that followed the death of Joseph Stalin in 1954.
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Brezhnev spent the next two years in Kazakhstan, where he became involved in developing new lands for agriculture. According to official Soviet government publications, Brezhnev greatly enjoyed his time there. It was during his time in Kazakhstan that Brezhnev became an ally of Nikita Khruschev and in 1957 succeeded Kliment Voroshilov as chairman of the presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, and thus the chief of state—or president of the Soviet Union—from May 7, 1960, until he resigned on July 15, 1964, to take a more active part in Communist Party affairs. On October 14, 1964, Brezhnev took part in the ousting of Khrushchev as first secretary of the CPSU and took his place, with a strong ally in Alexei Kosygin, the chairman of the council of ministers during most of Brezhnev’s time in power. Brezhnev and Kosygin pledged themselves to reinvigorating the economy of the Soviet Union and ensuring that it remained one of the superpowers. In contrast to Khrushchev, who made personal decisions on most issues, Brezhnev operated a more collective form of leadership and gradually tended to concentrate on larger foreign and defense matters. Nikolai V. Podgorny’s retirement as chairman of the presidium of the Supreme Soviet (in essence head of state) meant that Brezhnev was able to assume that position as well, making it the first time the general secretary of the Communist Party was also head of state; Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko, and Mikhail Gorbachev were later to combine both roles. On an organizational level, Brezhnev was keen to reduce membership of the CPSU, which had expanded under Khrushchev. He always felt that the larger the party the more unwieldy it could become. Like many people at the time, Brezhnev was fascinated by the achievements of Yuri Gagarin, and he poured much government energy and resources into space research. However, he was quickly diverted by political machinations. With the Prague Spring of 1968 threatening Soviet control of the country, Brezhnev reacted quickly. When he could not persuade Czechoslovak Communist Party leaders to change their positions, he ordered Warsaw Pact troops into Czechoslovakia. This was later justified by the “Brezhnev Doctrine,” with the Soviet Union stating publicly that it could intervene in countries within its sphere of influence. But Brezhnev was careful to be seen as acting multilaterally and soldiers from other Warsaw Pact countries were also involved. It was a move decried in the West but Brezhnev saw the political storm in western Europe as a price he had to pay for what he genuinely did regard as a threat to Soviet hegemony in eastern Europe.
Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev (right) meets with U.S. president Gerald Ford in the mid-1970s.
Soon afterward, Brezhnev entered with U.S. president Richard Nixon into a period of détente. Nixon visited the Soviet Union in 1972 and the two signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT 1) on May 26, 1972, at a summit meeting in Moscow. In 1973, Brezhnev traveled to the United States. In November 1976, Jimmy Carter was elected U.S. president and there was a greater focus on human rights. There was much Western press coverage of dissidents such as Anatoly Sharansky and Andrey Sakharov, as well as the use of Soviet mental asylums for holding critics of the government. However, the presence of more Western tourists in the Soviet Union also tended to lessen tensions and to open up the country considerably. They naturally visited Moscow and Leningrad (St. Petersburg), and began to travel to Kazakhstan and other parts of Central Asia, admittedly on tours organized by the Soviet travel bureau Intourist. After his health declined in late 1979, Brezhnev was seen in public less often, although he did visit Yugoslavia for the death of Marshal Tito in May 1980. Pictures of a seemingly robust Brezhnev meeting with Jimmy Carter reassured many of the Soviet leader’s health. By this time the Soviet Union was embroiled in a major conflict in Afghanistan. The Soviet government clearly did not expect the major storm of protests from the West, although the West’s reactions to the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in December 1978 should have prepared it for this. Brezhnev saw it as the Soviet Union aiding a neighboring government that was about to succumb to Muslim fundamentalists. Brezhnev’s actions in Afghanistan became one of the most criticized aspects of Soviet foreign policy.
The next big test for Brezhnev was over the founding of the independent trade union, Solidarity, which was established in Poland in September 1980. When by the following year Solidarity boasted a membership of 10 million, Brezhnev was keen on the Polish authorities’ acting quickly. On December 13, 1981, the Polish government imposed martial law and declared the Solidarity trade union illegal. Its leader, Lech Wałe˛sa, was arrested and his release only days after Brezhnev’s death clearly indicated Brezhnev’s role in the crackdown. When Brezhnev died on November 10, 1982, in Moscow, he was buried in Red Square. Apparently the team that had embalmed Lenin and had looked after Lenin’s body for decades expected to be asked to embalm Brezhnev, but this was not the case. For many years Brezhnev had been a familiar figure on the international stage. He had also received more public honors than most Soviet leaders, including the Lenin Peace Prize in 1973, the title of marshal of the Soviet Union in 1976, the Order of Victory (the highest military honor) in 1978, and the Lenin Prize for Literature (for his memoirs) in 1979. In hindsight, however, the Brezhnev era was regarded as one of economic stagnation. Although published economic figures showed that the economy was improving, and that economic growth had accelerated, the truth was that the Soviet infrastructure was wearing out, and its military was unable to keep up with new technology being designed in the United States. The Brezhnev years represented a decline in initiative, and the economy was largely maintained through the country’s massive natural resources. Brezhnev’s successor as general secretary of the CPSU was Yuri Andropov, who, although he had been head of the feared KGB, was determined to overcome the malaise that had taken place during the 1970s. He had been the man who had actually carried out Brezhnev’s policies of putting dissidents in mental asylums and forced internal exile. In a surprise move, Andropov immediately launched a crackdown on official corruption. Andropov also tried to repair relations with China, but died after only 15 months as general secretary. He was replaced by one of Brezhnev’s staunchest supporters, Konstantin Chernenko. On Chernenko’s death after 13 months as general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary of the CPSU. Further reading: Anderson, Richard. Public Politics in an Authoritarian State: Making Foreign Policy During the Brezhnev Years. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993; Brezhnev, Leonid I. Memoirs. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1982; Dallin, Alexander, ed. The Khrushchev and Brezhnev Years. New York: Garland, 1992; Gelman, Harry. The Brezhnev
Brown v. Board of Education
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Politburo and the Decline of Détente. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984. Justin Corfield
Brown v. Board of Education The unanimous May 17, 1954, U.S. Supreme Court decision known informally as Brown sent shock waves through a deeply segregated nation and strengthened the growing African-American Civil Rights movement. Intended to end the racial segregation of public schools, the Brown decision made important inroads, but educational equality for minorities remained elusive. By 1948 the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Legal Defense and Educational Fund, headed by lawyer Thurgood Marshall, was focusing on dramatically unequal public schools. Eventually they would bring to the nation’s highest court a group of five lawsuits initiated by African-American parents from South Carolina; Virginia; Washington, DC; Delaware; and Topeka, Kansas. The Brown case was named for Oliver Brown, the pastor father of Linda, a seven-year-old third-grader. She daily navigated a Topeka rail yard and busy roads to attend an all-black school although a white school was nearby. Compared to other school systems in the Brown case, Topeka provided relatively equal facilities to its tiny black population; community activists emphasized that racial separation made black children there feel inferior. The combined cases reached the Supreme Court in 1952, but its ruling was postponed in anticipation of a rehearing. By then the Court had a newly appointed chief justice, Earl Warren, a former Republican governor of California. Brown would become the first of many cases that made the Warren Court a byword for judicial activism on behalf of America’s disenfranchised. Warren read the 11-page decision aloud. It invoked the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment in support of equal protection for minorities. It marshaled sociological and psychological evidence showing that racial separation, especially of children, rendered them “inherently unequal.” And Brown invalidated Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 ruling that had affirmed the doctrine of “separate but equal.” In 1955 with a decision dubbed Brown II, the Court urged federal judges to undo school segregation “with all deliberate speed.” By then a forceful white backlash had emerged. Although some southern and border states began to
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educate black and white children together, many districts defied the Court’s suggestions. In 1956 a “Southern Manifesto,” initiated by South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, accused the Court of abusing its power and vowed to reverse Brown. It was signed by 19 of 22 southern senators and 77 of 105 representatives. In cities like Charlotte and New Orleans efforts to enroll black children in white schools were met with hostility and outright violence. In Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957 an attempt by nine carefully chosen black students to attend Central High School was met with spitting, kicking, and death threats, encouraged by Governor Orval Faubus. Reluctantly President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered army and national guard troops into Little Rock to restore order. By 1964 only 1.2 percent of black children in 11 southern states were attending school with white children. Many whites left public schools for nominally “private” academies. The situation “up north” was hardly better. There, segregation occurred not by law (de jure), but by longstanding patterns of racial housing discrimination (de facto). In the 1970s a Boston judicial plan to bus black students to predominantly white schools triggered violent protests not unlike those in Little Rock, as white families fled to suburban schools. Meanwhile African-American parents, most at first delighted by Brown, questioned the aims of racial integration and doubted its realization. They argued that adequate school budgets and resources were more important than seating their children next to whites in the classroom. In 1967 the NAACP’s Thurgood Marshall became the first African-American justice appointed to the Supreme Court, but the racial equality he had worked to achieve remained only partially implemented when Brown’s 50th anniversary was celebrated in 2004. Further reading: Kluger, Richard. Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality. New York: Knopf, 2004; Patterson, James T. Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and its Troubled Legacy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Marsha E. Ackermann
Bush, George H. W. (1924– ) U.S. president
George Herbert Walker Bush (b. June 12, 1924) was president of the United States from 1989 to 1993 after
serving as Ronald Reagan’s vice president for the previous eight years. He was born in Massachusetts, the son of Prescott Bush, a banker and future senator whose indirect financial ties to the Nazi Party remain controversial. He followed in his father’s footsteps by entering military service on his 18th birthday, in the midst of World War II, and became the country’s youngest naval aviator; by the time he was discharged at the end of the war three years later, he had received three Air Medals, the Distinguished Flying Cross, and the Presidential Unit Citation. He entered Yale University, where he majored in economics, joined the Skull and Bones society as his father had, and captained the baseball team in the first College World Series. In 1964, the year after Prescott finished his second and final year as senator from Connecticut, Bush ran for the Senate in Texas, winning the Republican nomination but losing the election. He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1966, where he served until again losing the senatorial election in 1970. In the 1970s, he served as the United States ambassador to the United Nations and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, an appointment that confirmed for many people the suspicions that he had been involved with the agency since his days at Yale. In fact, CIA documents have admitted that Bush’s business partner in Zapata Petroleum, the oil business he started, was a covert agent. The extent of Bush’s other ties with the agency have not been established. In 1980 Bush was Ronald Reagan’s principal opponent in the Republican primaries and the one who coined the derisive term “voodoo economics” to refer to Reagan’s fiscal policy. When Reagan won the Republican nomination, he made Bush his running mate; the two won decisively in both 1980 and 1984. In 1988 Bush became one of the few vice presidents to succeed his president. Over the course of the Reagan presidency, the cold war had all but ended, and during Bush’s term, the Berlin Wall was taken down, Germany reunified, the Soviet Union dissolved, and many Eastern European countries behind the Iron Curtain began holding elections or overthrew their communist governments. In 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait, Bush led the United Nations coalition in operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, liberating Kuwait but stopping short of invading Iraq; it was, Bush said, not a war for oil but a war against aggression. Significantly, it was also a televised war, the first major American military action conducted under the watch of cable news. Americans whose parents had been the first to see footage of war on the evening news were now the first to see their war broadcast live.
Bush, George W.
George H. W. Bush and King Fahd (seated, right) meet in the Royal Pavilion in Saudi Arabia to discuss the situation in Iraq in 1990.
In the 1992 election Bush lost to Governor Bill Clinton, an election notable for the involvement of Texas billionaire and third-party candidate Ross Perot, who won nearly a fifth of the popular vote despite frequent decisions not to run. Key to Bush’s loss were the recession, the perception that he was out of touch with the common man (particularly when compared with the genial Clinton), and the desire for change to reflect a new state of affairs in the wake of the cold war. Further reading: Duffy, Michael, and Dan Goodgame. Marching In Place: The Status Quo Presidency of George Bush. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992; Green, John Robert. The Presidency of George Bush. Lawrence: Kansas University Press, 2000; Kelley, Kitty. The Family: The True Story of the Bush Dynasty. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 2004; Smith, Jean Edward. George Bush’s War. New York: Henry Holt, 1992. Bill Kte’pi
Bush, George W. (1946– ) U.S. president
George Walker Bush was the 43rd president of the United States, elected in 2000 and serving from 2001 to 2008. His presidency began and remained in controversy, from the issues surrounding the 2000 election to the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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The oldest son of President George H. W. Bush, Bush was raised in Texas where his father had moved to start his Zapata Oil corporation, and like other men in his family, attended Yale University where he earned a degree in history and was a member of the Skull and Bones society. While his father and grandfather had served in the navy during wartime, he served in the Air National Guard during the Vietnam War. Bush has described this period of his life as irresponsible and informed by bad choices, characterized by excessive drinking. After a failed congressional bid, he spent most of the 1980s working in the oil industry before purchasing a share of the Texas Rangers baseball team, of which he served as general manager from 1989 to 1994. He ran for governor of Texas in 1994, the same year his younger brother Jeb ran for governor of Florida; Jeb lost, but was elected in 1998, the same year George won his reelection by a landslide. As governor of Texas, Bush was a noted conservative. State executions rose to higher levels than any other state in modern American history, and the line between church and state was worn thin when Bush declared June 10, 2000, to be “Jesus Day,” a state holiday in memory of Jesus and encouraging reaching out to those in need. At the time, Bush was running for president; in an early debate preceding the Republican primaries, he named Jesus (identifying him only by the religious title “Christ”) as the political philosopher he most identified with. He won the Republican nomination, picking Dick Cheney—his father’s secretary of defense—as his running mate. Voting irregularities in Florida, where Jeb was still governor, made it difficult to determine whether Bush or Clinton’s vice president, Al Gore, had won the state, and the electoral vote in the rest of the country was close enough that the Florida votes would be the tiebreakers. Less than one-tenth of 1 percent separated the two candidates, requiring a series of recounts both by hand and machine, and precipitating a national controversy over reports of vote tampering, problematic ballot designs and the handling of overseas ballots, and the coincidence of a Bush governing the state. The U.S. Supreme Court finally ruled that with no time remaining to require a thorough and uniform recount, the state’s then-official count—in favor of Bush—would be upheld. Gore conceded the election rather than fight the matter further. More than any other president in recent memory, even in light of Ronald Reagan’s cold war rhetoric and its resemblance to “fire and brimstone” sermons, Bush has worn his faith on his sleeve, making frequent reference to God and Christian matters in his speeches. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Bush
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Black smoke billows from Ground Zero at the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001. Merely months into his presidency, the events of September 11 proved pivotal for the rest of George W. Bush’s two terms.
declared a “war on terrorism,” and shortly identified an “axis of evil” (Iran, Iraq, and North Korea) as those states most guilty of sponsoring terrorist activity. Both terms of his presidency have been defined by this initiative. While foreign policy led to war with Afghanistan and a protracted war in Iraq, domestic policy was affected by the USA Patriot Act and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. The Office of Strategic Influence was created in secret to develop psychological means of furthering the war on terrorism, changing its name once the public discovered its existence. Bush and his administration have come under constant criticism. He has positioned himself as his father’s successor, staffing his cabinet with several men associated with the elder Bush and repeatedly referring to an Iraqi assassination attempt (“they tried to kill my dad”) as part of his justification for the war in Iraq. His approval rating has dipped as low as 28 percent, among the lowest presidential approval ratings in history, and several
prominent movements have called for his impeachment, usually in response to the controversy surrounding the National Security Agency’s warrant-less surveillance. His slow response to the failure of the levees in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005 has also come under fire, particularly given his support of the clearly ineffective Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Further reading: Daalder, Ivo H. America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy. New York: Wiley, 2005; Mansfield, Stephen. The Faith of George W. Bush. New York: Tarcher, 2003; Minutaglio, Bill. First Son: George W. Bush and the Bush Family Dynasty. New York: Three Rivers, 2001; Toobin, Jeffrey. Too Close To Call: The Thirty-Six Day Battle To Decide the 2000 Election. New York: Random House, 2002. Bill Kte’pi
C Canada after 1950 Since the mid-20th century Canada has been a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary democracy with a federal system of parliamentary government. Canada’s constitution governs the legal framework of the country and consists of written text and unwritten traditions and conventions. Until November 1981 Canada’s government retained strong ties to the British parliament; the Canadian constitution could only be amended by an act of Great Britain’s parliament. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s negotiations between the provinces and the federal government that were designed to patriate the constitution and provide an amending procedure were unsuccessful. These negotiations between the federal government and the English-speaking provinces finally bore fruit in 1981, giving Canada full amendment powers over its own constitution. Prior to this, Queen Elizabeth II of England had been the chief of state, and despite the patriation of the constitution, ties between Canada and the Commonwealth of Nations remain close. On September 27, 2005, Michaëlle Jean was appointed by the queen, on the advice of the prime minister, as governor-general of Canada for a five-year term. In February 2006 Stephen Harper became prime minister. This position belongs to the leader of the political party that can obtain the confidence of a majority in the House of Commons, whose members are elected by the citizens by simple plurality in one electoral
district. General elections are called by the governorgeneral when the prime minister so advises, and must occur every five years or less. Ever since its founding, Canada has had two official languages, English and French, which are the mother tongues of 56 percent and 28 percent of the population, respectively. On July 7, 1969, the Official Languages Act was proclaimed, and French was made commensurate to English throughout the federal government. This started a process that led to Canada’s redefining itself as a “bilingual” nation. French is mostly spoken in Quebec province, parts of New Brunswick, eastern and northern Ontario, Saskatchewan, the south of Nova Scotia, and the southern Manitoba province. Several aboriginal languages also have official status in the Northwest Territories. Inuktitut is the majority language in Nunavut and has official status there. Since the mid-20th century religion patterns have not changed much. They changed with the arrival of new immigrants, as they did during the country’s early days. Seventy-seven percent of Canadians identify themselves as Christians, and of that Catholics make up the largest group (43 percent). The largest Protestant denomination is the United Church of Canada; about 17 percent of Canadians have no religious affiliation; and the remaining 6 or 7 percent practice religions other than Christianity. Canada’s entertainment industry grew alongside the United States’s leading film and music industry, having had a quick development during the 1950s and 1960s, but the most rapid development after the 1990s. For 77
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decades the Canadian film market was dominated by the American film industry, but then Canadians developed a vigorous film industry that produced a variety of well-known films, actors, and directors. Canada’s film industry is in full expansion as a site for Hollywood productions. The series The X-Files was famously shot in Vancouver, as was Stargate, the 2003 version of Battlestar Galactica, and The Outer Limits. The American series Queer as Folk was filmed in Toronto. After the 1980s Canada—and Vancouver in particular—became known as Hollywood North. Canadian literature shows a mixture of French and Anglo-Saxon trends. After the mid-20th century there were many advances in literature, mainly since the 1980s. But before those years Canada’s literature also had some important authors. Whether written in English or French, Canadian literature reflects three main parts of the Canadian experience: nature and the relation with the sea, frontier life, and Canada’s position in the world. Further reading: Bothwell, Robert, Ian Drummond, and John English. Canada Since 1945. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989; Morton, Desmond. A Short History of Canada. Edmonton: Hurtig, 1983; Norrie, Kenneth, Douglas Owram, and J. C. Herbert Emery. A History of the Canadian Economy. Toronto: Thomson-Nelson, 2002; Wallace, Iain. A Geography of the Canadian Economy. Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2002. Diego I. Murguía
Caribbean Basin Initiative Launched by U.S. president Ronald Reagan in 1983, the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) built on the legacy of the Alliance for Progress (1961–69) to foster free trade, open markets, economic growth, and export diversification throughout the circum-Caribbean, including Central America. Formally called the Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act (CBERA), and going into effect on January 1, 1984, the program was made permanent in the Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Expansion Act (CBI II) in 1990 and was expanded substantially in 2000 under President Bill Clinton in the Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act (CBTPA). The CBTPA, set to expire in 2008, includes 24 countries in a regional trading bloc akin to that created by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Measured in
terms of the dollar values of goods exchanged, the initiative has proven successful. In 2004 the total value of CBI exports to the United States more than tripled from 1984, reaching $27.8 billion, while U.S. exports to CBI countries reached $24.5 billion, 1.6 percent of total U.S. exports, making the CBI region the eighth largest recipient of U.S. exports. The CBI was launched during a period of escalating tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, when the U.S. foreign policy establishment was deeply concerned with the growth of leftist and revolutionary movements in Central America and the Caribbean. By 1983 the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua was entering its fourth year; the leftist FDR-FMLN political and guerrilla movements in El Salvador posed a serious challenge to that country’s U.S.-supported government; and the Guatemalan military’s U.S.-supported war against several guerrilla groups and genocidal campaign against the country’s indigenous peoples had already peaked. The October 1983 U.S. invasion of Grenada to oust that country’s anti-imperialist, Marxist-oriented government further underscored the geopolitical concerns of U.S. foreign policymakers. The CBI, which excluded Nicaragua until the Sandinista electoral defeat in 1990, was thus similar to Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress in its goal of weakening Soviet and Cuban influence, preventing leftist movements and governments from expanding their power, and tightening the economic integration between the United States and the nationstates of its historic “backyard.” Scholarly interpretations of the CBI’s economic and social impact vary widely. All observers agree that the CBI has expanded trade and promoted economic growth, but disagree over whether that growth has fostered sustainable economic development, diminished inequalities, alleviated poverty, or enhanced the social well-being of the majority. Critics charge that the CBI’s export-led model of growth has done little to improve living standards and has perpetuated structural inequalities within CBI member countries and between them and the United States. The CBI’s supporters argue that economic growth remains the sine qua non of poverty alleviation and improved social conditions. While it is difficult to disaggregate the effects of CBI-induced economic changes from other factors, the evidence indicates that poverty rates, socioeconomic differentiation, and indices of social well-being in most CBI countries have seen marginal improvements at best since 1984. All observers agree that the CBI and related U.S. laws
Carter, Jimmy
will continue to have a major impact on the region’s economies and inhabitants. Further reading: Alonso, Irma T., ed. Caribbean Economies in the Twenty-First Century. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2002; Rosen, Ellen Israel. Making Sweatshops: The Globalization of the U.S. Apparel Industry. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Michael J. Schroeder
Carter, Jimmy
(1924– ) U.S. president James Earl Carter, Jr., was the president of the United States from 1977 to 1981, succeeding Gerald Ford. Though he only served a single term, his was a significant presidency in both foreign and domestic affairs, and he presided over a tumultuous time in American history. Like his predecessor, he was a gifted student and athlete and a navy officer. He resigned from the navy in 1953 immediately following the death of his father and worked on his family’s Georgia peanut farm for the rest of the decade, becoming active in local politics. In 1962 he was elected to the State Senate, and he ran for governor only four years later, losing, but winning the 1970 election. During the election, he seemed to pay lip service to segregationists, but he condemned segregation immediately upon attaining office. He was the first southern governor to condemn segregation, and he underscored his point by appointing blacks to many state offices. A reform-minded pragmatist, he worked at streamlining state government, condensing programs and agencies while increasing school funding, especially in the poorer parts of the state. But nothing in his governorship brought him to national attention, and when he ran for president in 1976, he was almost a complete unknown. He made his reorganization of state government the centerpiece of his national campaign, and his soft-spoken charisma, southernness, and traditional moral character (Carter had taught Sunday school for years, and his sister Ruth was a well-known evangelist) were well received in the aftermath of Nixon’s corruption and Ford’s irrelevance. Though his opposition to segregation distanced him from the Dixiecrats, he was conservative for a Democrat and had criticized 1972 Democratic candidate George McGovern for being too liberal. Sentiment was against Ford sufficiently for Carter to win the election,
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albeit by a slim (2 percent) margin. He was the first southerner elected president since 1848. As president, Carter inherited a difficult economic situation. Stagflation and the 1973 oil crisis had discouraged growth for too long, after the lengthy healthy period to which Americans had become accustomed after World War II. The 1979 energy crisis followed the Iranian revolution, when the (previously Americansupported) shah of Iran fled his country and allowed the Ayatollah Khomeini to seize power. Inflation reached double digits, and although many of Carter’s fixes were probably effective, the results were not seen until after he had lost the 1980 election. Where Carter excelled was in diplomacy. In September 1978 he brought Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat to Camp David, to continue and finalize peace negotiations that had been ongoing for months in the wake of the Yom Kippur War and the other Middle Eastern conflicts of the decade. The Camp David accords remain one of the most important developments in modern Middle Eastern relations, setting a precedent for Arab-Israeli diplomacy while segregating powerful Egypt from its Arab allies. Carter’s foreign policy was driven by his respect for human rights, which may have influenced his decision to deny the shah’s request for help during the Iranian Revolution. Though the shah’s reign had begun with American support immediately after World War II, and his governance remained more liberal and Western-friendly than any other in the region, his social policies were still a far cry from what even conservative Westerners would support, and by the late ’70s, this gap was more pronounced than it had been 30 years earlier. Carter did eventually grant the exiled shah entry to the United States for cancer treatment in October 1979. In response, Iranian militants seized the American embassy in Tehran and held 53 hostages for more than a year. There is widespread speculation that the final negotiations were delayed by parties seeking Ronald Reagan’s election; the hostages were released on the day of his inauguration. The combination of the failing economy and the hostage crisis led to Carter’s loss to Reagan in the 1980 election. For years he was considered something of a joke, emblematic of a weak Democratic Party unable to contend with the 12-year Reagan-Bush era. He remained active in humanitarian work, especially in the areas of human rights and public health, and was only the third U.S. president to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Since the 1990s he has taken on a role as occasional diplomat, visiting countries such as North Korea and Venezuela, and was the first president to visit Cuba
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since the 1959 revolution. He has also been active with the charity Habitat for Humanity. Further reading: Bourne, Peter G. Jimmy Carter: A Comprehensive Biography From Plains to Post-Presidency. New York Scribner, 1997; Harris, David. The Crisis: The President, The Prophet, and the Shah: 1979 and the Coming of Militant Islam. New York: Little, Brown, 2004; Kaufman, Burton I. The Presidency of James Earl Carter Jr. Lawrence: Kansas University Press, 1993; Schram, Martin. Running For President, 1976: The Carter Campaign. New York: Stein and Day, 1977. Bill Kte’pi
Castro, Fidel
(1926– ) Cuban revolutionary leader Head of the Cuban Communist Party and leader of the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro is one of the major world figures of the second half of the 20th century. One of the longest-lived heads of state in modern times, and one of the most controversial, Castro was born out of wedlock on August 13, 1926, a few kilometers south of the Bay of Nipe in then-Oriente province (present-day Holguín) in eastern Cuba. His father, Angel Castro y Argiz, was a Galician immigrant and owner of a large sugar estate; his mother, Lina Ruz González, was a servant in Angel’s house and, after Fidel’s 17th birthday, Angel’s second wife. As an adult, Fidel grew estranged from his parents, maintaining close relations mainly with his younger brother Raúl, who also became one of the revolution’s premier leaders. Graduating from the Jesuit high school Belén in Havana in 1945, Castro entered the University of Havana the same year. In 1947 he joined the moderately reformist and anti-imperialist Orthodox Party (Partido Ortodoxo), led by Eduardo Chibás. In 1948 he traveled to Bogotá, Colombia, for a student conference being held alongside the ninth meeting of the PanAmerican Union. There he witnessed and participated in the extraordinary events of the Bogotazo, in which liberal leader Jorge Gaitán was assassinated and Bogotá erupted in massive street violence. The events are considered to have had a major impact on his thinking on the role of violence and popular insurrection in sparking social change. Returning to Cuba, he married Mirta Díaz Balart, daughter of a wealthy Cuban family. He earned his law
Fidel Castro in his early days in power. He was the undisputed leader of Cuba from 1959 until 2008.
degree in 1950 and joined a small firm in Havana whose work focused mainly on the poor. Intensely interested in politics, he became a parliamentary candidate in 1952, only to see the elections cancelled following the coup by General Fulgencio Batista. Determined to challenge the regime, he and his brother Raúl plotted and carried out an assault on the Moncada barracks in eastern Cuba on July 26, 1953. The assault proved a military defeat but a political victory, with his four-hour “History will absolve me” speech at his October 1953 trial propelling him into national prominence. Imprisoned for less than 20 months of a 15-year sentence (released in May 1955 in a general amnesty), he went into exile in Mexico and began organizing his 26 July Movement, composed of Cuban exiles and other Latin Americans, including Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Forming the nucleus of a guerrilla army, he and his followers returned clandestinely to eastern Cuba on December 2, 1956, where for the next two years they waged a guerrilla war against the Batista regime. Seizing power on January 1, 1959, he was still vague about his ideology, which by his public statements could be
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c haracterized as broadly nationalist and focused on issues of social justice. From 1959 to 1961 the revolution radicalized and became integral to the cold war. In December 1961 he announced, “I am a MarxistLeninist.” Since 1959 he was the undisputed leader of the Cuban revolution and government—revered by some, despised by others (especially the Miami-based cuban exile community)—and renowned for his volcanic energy, hours-long speeches, and hands-on leadership style. In early 2007 his death appeared imminent, but he remained in power until his resignation in February 2008. See also Bay of Pigs. Further reading: Gott, Richard. Cuba: A New History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004; Thomas, Hugh. Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom. New York: Harper & Row, 1971.
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bly high in the region. Many have suggested that the chronic environmental problems have been inherited from the Soviet regime. During the 1930s Joseph Stalin attempted to increase Soviet cotton production by constructing new canals in order to irrigate Central Asian lands. Water from the Aral continues to be diverted to the existing irrigation systems. As a result, a contemporary ecological problem is the constant shrinking of the Aral Sea. In addition, land surrounding the Aral Sea faces desertification, which jeopardizes homes and businesses near the water. Airborne pollutants have resulted in high levels of tuberculosis, viral hepatitis, and cardiovascular and liver diseases. Although each of the former Soviet Central Asian republics face similar challenges, each state also offers a different narrative, and generalizations do not tell the entire story. Indeed, each of the five former Soviet republics has embarked on different paths since independence.
Michael J. Schroeder
Central Asia after 1991 The former Soviet Republics of Central Asia consist of the present-day states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. All five of the so-called stans received their independence during the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Often the five former Soviet republics are considered collectively because they share many of the same challenges and problems. One challenge commonly faced by the states of Central Asia is the rise of radical Islam. The geographic center of the movement is the Fergana Valley. The valley is shared by Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, and has hosted a centuries-long tradition of independent Islamic thinking. Namangan, a key city in the valley, is also the home of a key founding member of the radical terrorist group the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU): Juma Namangani. Another typical problem in the region is one of effective governance. Recent World Bank ratings attest to the regional governance dilemma. Quantitative scores for variables such as voice and accountability, political stability, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, and control of corruption rank near the bottom third for each state. Another significant problem in Central Asia is the environment. Cities in the region face water shortages and contaminated water, pollution, and radioactive and toxic waste issues. Radon and uranium levels are nota-
Kazakhstan The formal name for Kazakhstan and the successor to the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic is the Republic of Kazakhstan. The capital is Astana. Kazakhstan is 1,049,155 square miles (about twice the size of Alaska). Figures from 2004 show a population of 15,143,704. Approximately 47 percent of all Kazakhs are Muslim. The predominant languages are Kazak and Russian. Kazakhstan neighbors Russia to the west and north, China to the east, and Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan to the south. President Nursultan Nazarbayev has served as the chief of state since before the December 16, 1991, day of independence. A sense of identity in Kazakhstan developed during the Soviet era. Ethnic Kazakh Dinmukhamed Kunaev served as the first secretary of the Kazakh Communist Party from 1956 to December 1986. Mikhail Gorbachev replaced Kunaev with a Slav named Gennady Kolbin. The violence and rioting that followed forced Gorbachev to turn to another Kazakh in order to placate Kazakh opinion. During the August 1991 putsch against Gorbachev, Nazarbayev supported Gorbachev. Shortly afterward Nazarbayev banned all political activity in the government as well as in the courts and police. As the Soviet Union disintegrated, the Kazakh president was one of the last to push for independence from the Soviet Union. Economically, Kazakhstan enjoys a prosperous grain agribusiness in the north and raises stock in the south. Many extractive minerals can be found in the northeast: coal, iron ore, lead, zinc, copper, chromite, nickel, molybdenum, and tin. In addition, Kazakhstan
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enjoys large deposits of oil and gas. The rich natural resources have, in addition, made Kazakhstan an attractive destination for foreign direct investment. In fact, from 1991 to 2002, direct foreign investment in Kazakhstan was over $13 billion. Kazakhstan boasts 4 billion tons of provable and recoverable oil reserves and 2 trillion cubic meters of natural gas. Estimates suggest that Kazakhstan may be able to produce about 3 million barrels of oil a day by the year 2015. Kazakhstan’s constitution dates to 1993. The system is a presidential-parliamentary model similar to that in Russia. The executive was to be popularly elected. In March 1994 the Constitutional Court found that the method previously used to elect representatives to the lower house of parliament was illegal. A change was made so that the lower house, the Majlis, would be elected and the upper house, the Senate, would be appointed. The president controlled seven appointments to the Senate, and indirect elections of a joint session of all representative bodies of all local government units filled the other 32. By December 1995 new parliamentary elections were held. Nazarbayev constructed his own political party, Otan, in 1999. That same year, 44 of 67 members in the lower house of parliament joined the Otan Party. The process for filling seats in the lower house was again changed. This time, 10 of the 67 possible seats were reserved for proportional representation for parties meeting a 7 percent threshold. Under pressure from Nazarbayev during October 1998, the parliament moved elections scheduled for December 2000 to January 1999. Ultimately Nazarbayev won the elections and received more than 79 percent of the vote. However, many questions existed about the fairness of the 1999 elections. Former prime minister Akezhan Kazhegeldin, a significant opponent of the regime, was not allowed to run. Nazarbayev was re-elected in 2005 by more than 90 percent of the vote. Outsiders again criticized the election as unfair. Overall, Kazakhstan operates in the tradition of strong presidential governments in the region, with a great deal of control in the hands of Nazarbayev and his family. Kyrgyzstan The formal name of the independent successor to the Kirgiz Soviet Socialist Republic is the Republic of Kyrgyzstan. The capital is Bishkek. Kyrgyzstan is 76,640 square miles in total area (a bit smaller than Nebraska). Figures from 2004 indicate a population of 5,081,429. Approximately 75 percent of the Kyrgyzstan population is Muslim. The prominent languages are Kyrgyz
and Russian. Kyrgzstan is bordered by Kazakhstan in the north, Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikistan to the west and southwest, and China to the east. Until the Soviet years, many in Kyrgyzstan were primarily nomadic. Life under the Soviet Union led to more modern life and movement to cities. Like many republics in the former Soviet Union, the late 1980s and early 1990s brought questions of identity to Kyrgyzstan. Gorbachev’s program of perestroika led to ethnic riots in 1990. In an area bordering Uzbekistan, riots led to the deaths of some 200 civilians. The leader of the Kyrgyz Communist Party, Absamat Masaliev, called for the Supreme Soviet to elect him as president. The movement called Democratic Kyrgyzstan emerged in opposition to Masaliev, and Askar Akayev was chosen as president. Early in its history, Kygyzstan was seen by many as the most progressive of all Central Asian governments. In fact, the United States symbolically opened its first Central Asian embassy in Bishkek on February 1, 1992. By 1993 Kyrgyzstan was receiving the highest per-capita aid from the United States of any of the Central Asian states. In 1988 Kyrgyzstan was the first of the new Central Asian states to be invited to join the World Trade Organization. Bishkek has had fairly warm relations with Russia, which include the presence of Russian troops in Kyrgyzstan. The Central Asian state also offered bases to U.S. forces and allowed military flights into the Manas International Airport in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Since independence, Kyrgyzstan has distributed free land to approximately 700,000 citizens. Much of the industry is devoted to extractive ventures. Mining of antimony and mercury ores are a source of revenue, and lead, zinc, and coal are all mined as well. Most of the economy, however, still relies on agriculture. Akayev led Kyrgyzstan on a path of political liberalization. Eventually, opposition to market reforms from the legislature led to Akayev’s calling for a referendum for February 1994. In that referendum, 96 percent of respondents favored Akayev and his economic program. He responded by dissolving a leftover from the Soviet era, the 350-seat Supreme Soviet. In its place Akayev created a bicameral legislature called the Assembly of the People of Kyrgyzstan. Elections were set for February 5, 1995. In those elections, more than 1,000 candidates ran for the 105 seats in the assembly. Approximately 80 percent of the candidates ran as independents and, ultimately, created an assembly very receptive to Akayev’s policies.
Civic education students listen to a visiting local religious leader, or mullah, in Kyrgyzstan.
After the 1995 elections, Akayev began to increase his own power through a number of constitutional amendments. A policy of privatization resulted in about 61 percent of all state-owned enterprises being privatized by May 1997. At that time Akayev became convinced that state assets were being sold too quickly, and a oneyear ban on privatization resulted. In April 1998 the legislature approved further privatization. Many within the political opposition, however, claim that members of the legislature personally profited from the privatization process. As the parliamentary elections of February– March 2000 grew nearer, the Kyrgyz government made a concerted effort to minimize the turnout of opposition parties. In fact, the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe criticized the elections as being unfair. Scheduled presidential elections in October 2000 created another challenge for Akayev. Akayev’s most significant opposition was widely believed to be Feliks Kulov, a former vice president. Kulov, however, was arrested, acquitted, and rearrested on what many felt were fabricated charges, and eventually he pulled out of the race. Akayev was reelected with 74.47 percent of the vote. After the election Feliks Kulov called for cooperation with Akayev’s government. In spite of this, Kulov was arrested once again in 2001. In November that year, the opposition parties formed a “People’s Congress” and, in what was mainly a symbolic move, elected Kulov chair. Opposition continued to grow when, in January 2002, a parliament deputy from southern Kyrgyzstan, Azimbek Beknazarov, was arrested. Clash-
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es between protesters and government authorities in March resulted in the deaths of six individuals. In April Kyrgyz authorities launched an investigation into the deaths. In May, as the commission released its report, protests calling for the resignation of Akayev spread throughout Kyrgyzstan. Akayev ordered the release of Beknazarov and even replaced the prime minister. Participation exceeded 86 percent. The referendum found that 75.5 percent supported the notion that Akayev serve until the completion of his term—in 2005. But 12 opposition parties refused to participate in the referendum. The most significant change in the constitution was the movement from a bicameral to unicameral legislature, to be effective at the end of the legislative term. On March 24, 2005, Akayev bowed to widespread protests and the will of the people and resigned. The “Tulip Revolution” was seen by many as the result of Akayev’s inability to address growing levels of crime and corruption as well as questions concerning his reelection. In the political shakeup that ensued, Kurmanbek Bakiev became president, and Omurbek Tekebaev became speaker of the Jogorku Kenesh, the parliament of Kyrgyzstan. Bakiev and Tekebaev engaged in a power struggle of their own. Tajikistan The formal name for Tajikistan is the Republic of Tajikistan, which is the independent successor state to the former Tadzhik Soviet Socialist Republic. Tajikistan’s 2004 figures placed the population at 7,011,556. The predominant language is Tajik. Tajikistan is neighbored by China to the east, Afghanistan to the south, Uzbekistan to the west and north, and Kyrgyzstan to the north. Approximately 85 percent of Tajiks are Muslim. A large number of Tajikistan’s Muslims are Sunni from the Hanafi School. Mountain Tajiks boast a number of Shi’ite communities. During the Soviet period, very few mosques were allowed. In addition, 80 percent of the population is Tajik, with the next-largest group being Uzbek at about 15 percent. The capital city of Tajikistan is Dushanbe. During the Soviet period, Tajikistan was typically ruled by leaders sent by Moscow. As late as 1990 Tajiks were a minority in the Tajik Communist Party. The programs of perestroika and glasnost introduced by Gorbachev changed the dynamics of Tajik politics. In August 1990 the Tajik Supreme Soviet claimed sovereignty. The Tajik Communist Party leader and chair of the Supreme Soviet, Kakhar Makhkamov, resigned in August 1991 because of his support for
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the hard-liner coup against Gorbachev. Makhkamov was replaced by Kadriddin Aslonov. Upon his appointment, Aslonov immediately resigned from the Politburo of the Tajik Communist Party and used a decree to ban the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from Tajik territory. The Tajik Supreme Soviet responded by ousting Aslonov as chair and electing Rakhmon Nabiyev. Nabiyev resigned as the chair of the Supreme Soviet on October 6. Elections set by the Supreme Soviet on November 24 initially featured 10 candidates—ultimately 7 would vie for the position. Rakhmon Nabiyev won of the November 1991 election with 56.9 percent of the vote. By the spring of 1992 opposition to Nabiyev came in the form of the Islamic-led Union of Popular Forces. The union pushed for multiparty elections, greater freedom of religion, and the removal of Nabiyev. The Tajik parliament gave Nabiyev the use of decree in order to strengthen the hand of the executive. Political protests continued, and Nabiyev resorted to the use of a state of emergency. In May opposition forces seized the capital and created a revolutionary council. Nabiyev lifted the state of emergency and promised to form a government of reconciliation. Eight seats in the new government were reserved for a coalition of democrats and moderate Islamists and the Islamic Revival Party. The compromise government only brought a brief period of peace. Nabiyev now not only faced criticism from Islamic opponents but also found himself under attack from ex-communists who insisted that he had ceded too much to the opposition. The central government quickly lost control of the countryside. Former communists began to seize local governments in the north, and the Islamists seized local governments in the south and the east. Nabiyev requested international peacekeepers from the Commonwealth of Independent States, while opposition forces declared an open rebellion. Nabiyev was captured as he attempted to flee Dushanbe and was forced to resign. A new Islamicdemocratic coalition government, led by Akbarsho Iskandarov, claimed control. The end result, at least for a time, was that the most developed regions of Tajikistan—the north—fell under the power of excommunists aligned with Nabiyev. Forces loyal to Nabiyev took over Dushanbe on December 10 and installed Emomali Rakhmonov as acting president. The Islamic forces fled to the mountainous regions of Tajikistan and to areas over the border in Afghanistan. The Tajik civil war was in full swing. As the war continued, the Tajik government received a great deal of financial and military sup-
port from Russia. By the fall of 1993 there were some 20,000 Russian troops in Tajikistan. Russian finances were providing an estimated 50 percent of the Tajik budget as well. The nearby government of Uzbekistan also provided a significant amount of support. In the summer of 1994 talks between the rebels and the Tajik government, held in Islamabad, led to a cessation of hostilities. In November 1994 presidential elections were held between Rakhmonov and former prime minister Abdumalik Abdulajanov. The new constitution was approved, and Rakhmonov won reelection with 60 percent of the vote. By early 1996 President Rakhmonov faced accusations of corruption. Russia informed Rakhmonov that they would not intervene again to save the regime. Rakhmonov began negotiations with the rebels and dismissed several high-ranking government officials. Under a great deal of pressure from the Russians, Rakhmonov traveled to Moscow in December 1996 to meet with the Islamic Renaissance Party, the largest party within the United Tajik Opposition (UTO). A peace agreement was reached, and a Reconciliation Council was formed. Once Rakhmonov returned to Dushanbe, however, he was unable to convince political allies to sign off on the agreement. Again, after tremendous pressure from Russia, Rakhmonov returned to Moscow in the spring of 1997 to negotiate with the UTO. Rakhmonov agreed to allow opposition troops into the Tajik armed forces. Meetings followed in Tehran in April 1997 and in Moscow in June 1997. The two political parties that supported the government—the People’s Party and the Political and Economic Renewal Party—combined to form the National Unity Movement. Tajik politics were set to be a contest between two different parties: one in support of President Rakhmonov and one opposition party. The movement to a two-party system, it was hoped, would have the effect of limiting the violence inherent heretofore in Tajik politics. The late 1990s were characterized by a number of political assassinations. In 1998 opposition politician Otakhon Latifi was killed, and a former prosecutor general, Tolib Boboyev, was killed in early 1999. The 1997 agreement called for parliamentary elections by 1998, but the ban on Islamic political parties retarded rapid reconciliation. The Tajik people, by 1999, faced three crucial amendments: the establishment of Islamic political parties, the creation of an upper chamber of parliament, and a single seven-year presidential term. All three amendments were approved on September 26. Presidential elections were scheduled for November 6,
1999, and lower-house parliamentary elections for February 27, 2000. Three potential presidential candidates were not allowed on the ballot based on the claim that they had not achieved the required number of signatures. The Islamic Renaissance Party—a key member of the UTO—called for a boycott of the presidential elections. The end result was that Rakhmonov only faced nominal resistance and was reelected with 96 percent of the vote. Parliamentary elections were just as complicated. In fact, the Supreme Court used various legal machinations to suppress opposition. The only parties to meet the 5 percent parliamentary threshold were the People’s Democratic Party, the Communist Party, and the Islamic Renaissance Party. Elections for the newly created upper house, the Majlisi Milliy, were held on March 23, 2000. In the Tajik system of governance, the Majlisi Milliy theoretically serves as a stabilizing factor in domestic politics. As in other states in the region, one of the primary concerns of the Tajik government is the specter of radical Islam. The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which was headquartered in Afghanistan, launched incursions into Kyrgyzstan via Tajikistan in 1999 and 2000. The Hizb ut-Tahrir later became a concern as well. Hizb ut-Tahrir called for an Islamic state in Central Asia. In 2002 President Rakhmonov stepped up attacks and surveillance of Islamic groups. Another significant modern problem facing Tajikistan is the transit of illegal drugs and associated problems. As a result of the 1992 to 1997 Tajik civil war, Tajikistan’s relations with Russia have been close. Even after the civil war ended, Russian troops remained in order to protect the Tajik border with Afghanistan. During the reign of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Tajikistan offered sanctuary to a Tajik commander and his troops. Ultimately, Tajikistan feared the potential spread of radical Islam from Afghanistan. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on the United States, Tajikistan was among the first to offer cooperation with the United States—despite the relatively warm relationship between Tajikistan and Russia. Tajikistan permitted the use of the Dushanbe Airport and allowed the basing of a small contingent of U.S. troops within its sovereign borders. Tajikistan boasts a presidential-parliamentary government. The president is popularly elected within a multiparty system and fills both the ceremonial role of head of state and the policy-creating role of a chief executive officer. The prime minister is appointed by the president and is confirmed by the lower chamber
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of parliament. The prime minister and the cabinet control the day-to-day operations of the government. President Rakhmonov and many of his political allies are former members of the Tajik Communist Party. The power-sharing arrangement of 1997 guaranteed 30 percent of government and local posts to opposition parties. Key to this arrangement is the reality that all geographic areas are represented. The power-sharing agreement was renewed in 1999 and then again, indefinitely, in 2002. Most of the Tajik economy is agricultural, and cotton is the most dominant agricultural product. Industrially, Tajikistan is mostly involved in the light manufacturing segments of cotton and silk processing. But Tajikistan is rich in nonferrous metals. Mining of coal, iron, lead, zinc, antimony, mercury, gold, tin, and tungsten are the most common extractive industries. Some deposits of oil and natural gas have also been discovered. Over three-quarters of Tajiks live at or near the poverty line. Politically, the uneasy peace that lasted since the end of the Tajik civil war offered some optimism for the future of that state. Turkmenistan The formal name for Turkmenistan is the Republic of Turkmenistan, which is the successor to the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic. Figures from 2004 indicated a population in Turkmenistan of 7,011,556. Muslims account for 85 percent of the population in Turkmenistan, which is 186,400 square miles in area. The capital city is Ashgabat, and Turkmenistan is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the north and east, and Iran and Afghanistan to the south. The Caspian Sea lies to the west. The Turkmen landmass is dominated by the Kara Kum Desert, also referred to as the Black Sand Desert. The Kara Kum Canal is the largest irrigation and shipping canal in the world. Approximately three-fourths of all citizens of Turkmenistan are Turkmen, with the next-largest ethnic groups being Uzbek, at about 9 percent, and Russian, at 6.7 percent. Since independence, a significant problem has been the flight of Russians. Although loyal to the Soviet Union, the Turkmen Supreme Soviet declared sovereignty in August 1990. Saparmurat Niyazov, first secretary of the Turkmen Communist Party, was elected to the office of president in October 1990. After the coup attempt on Gorbachev, in 1991, Niyazov declared Turkmen independence and scheduled a referendum for October 26. In the referendum 94 percent favored independence. The next day Niyazov made independence
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official and seized all assets of the Soviet Communist Party. The Turkmen Communist Party was renamed the Turkmen Democratic Party and elected Niyazov as chair. Niyazov served as president until late December 2006. Turkmen foreign policy is based upon a number of bilateral agreements and does not allow multilateral agreements. In terms of domestic policy, Niyazov engaged in a strategy to enhance the Turkmen culture. He adopted the name the Great Turkmenbashi and claimed a “monopoly on wisdom.” Attempts to isolate Turkmenistan included the banning of opera, the closing of concert halls and the circus, ending the Academy of Sciences, and institution of Turkmen-only language laws. In addition, Turkmenistan had no recognized opposition parties. A referendum held in January 1994 on whether Niyazov’s term should be extended to 2002 resulted in a reported 1,959,408 for, 212 against, and 13 spoiled ballots. In November 2002, however, Niyazov survived an assassination attempt. In 2003 Niyazov constructed penal colonies in the Karakum desert in an effort to, according to Niyazov, make society healthier by cleansing society. Niyazov died in late December 2006 and was succeeded by Deputy Prime Minister Gurbungali Berdymukhamedov. Initial elections were held in December 1994. During the legislative elections, no opposition party was able to meet the standards required for registration. Hence the vast majority of the 1994 victors were all members of the Democratic Party of Turkmenistan—and ran unopposed. In December 1999 parliamentary elections were held once again. This time 102 candidates competed for 50 seats. Again—other than a few scattered independents—the candidates were almost exclusively members of the Democratic Party of Turkmenistan. In 2002 the former chair of the Turkmen Central Bank, Hudaiberdi Orazov, joined the anti-Niyazov forces. Orazov was fired as deputy prime minister in 2000. Characterizing himself as a reformer, Orazov lost some credibility when he was charged with embezzling money from the Turkmen government. Orazov later admitted partially to the charges and even returned $100,000 in funds. All three major political opponents ended up living in Moscow. Niyazov followed with a purge of the National Security Committee in March 2002. Defense Minister Kurbandurdy Begendjev was also fired, as were a number of other high-ranking officials on the National Security Committee. A month later, in May 2002, the former head of the National Security Committee and 21 of his subordinates were accused of a number of crimes that included murder, hiring prosti-
tutes, accepting bribes, and corruption. Also charged with corruption was ex-defense minister Begendjev. The trials proceeded very rapidly and led to long prison sentences. Purges also led to the dismissals of the chair of the National Bank, the head of the country’s main television outlet, the chair of the Council for Television and Radio Broadcasting, and the rector of the Institute of Culture. Perhaps one of the most mysterious developments in Turkmenistan’s politics was the attempted assassination of Niyazov on November 25, 2002. A number of conflicting accounts emerged, but what they all shared was that an armed attempt was made on Niyavoz and that his car escaped untouched. Some political opponents accused Niyazov of masterminding the attack himself in some sort of effort to enhance his political position both domestically and internationally. Niyazov used the attack as an excuse to crack down on the opposition again. The assassination attempt was followed by the arrests of hundreds—including a number of foreign citizens. Niyazov raided the Uzbek embassy and accused them of harboring assassination conspirators, and then expelled the Uzbek ambassador. Somewhat ironically, regime opponent and former foreign minister Boris Shikhmuradov was arrested several days before the assassination attempt while attempting to secretly enter Turkmenistan from Uzbekistan. Shikhmuradov was sentenced to life in prison. In early 2003 Niyazov was pursuing law enforcement and security officials because of the assassination attempt. Turkmenistan utilized the Soviet-era government system until December 1994. At that point Turkmenistan created a new system in which the president is the head of state and head of government. The legislative arm of Turkmenistan is the Majlis and consists of 50 members elected for a five-year term. Niyazov dominated the legislative branch. The Turkmen system also includes constitutional and supreme courts. The constitution of Turkmenistan also calls for a body called the Khalk Maslakhaty (People’s Supreme Council). The People’s Supreme Council is the country’s supreme consultation body. Theoretically, the People’s Supreme Council is to meet annually, but it met for the first time in three years in August 2002. The council includes cabinet members, local executive bodies, judges, and members of some nongovernmental organizations. At the 2003 annual meeting the Khalk Maslakhaty took over many of the functions previously entrusted to the Majlis. Economically, Niyazov spoke in favor of private property. In December 1996 Niyazov began a program
of leasing that allowed farmers to receive land from state farms free of rent for a period of 15 years. Cotton is a leading agricultural product, but grain is also produced. Industry in Turkmenistan is limited mainly to extractive ventures and, specifically, oil and gas. Turkmenistan has the third-largest natural gas reserves in the world, and its Caspian Sea oil deposits are topped only by those in Kazakhstan. Foreign investment, in large part due to the nature of Niyazov’s regime, has been very slow. Major markets for Turkmen gas now include western Europe, Russia, Ukraine, and Iran. The growth of Turkmenistan has been slow and painful. Energy sales provided needed funds, but these funds were almost all spent by Niyazov in efforts to enhance his own cult of personality. Ultimately, Turkmenistan’s future was clouded by the possibilities of political instability, made even more cogent with the death of Niyazov on December 21, 2006. In February 2007 Gurbungali Berdymukhamedov was elected president. Uzbekistan Officially the Republic of Uzbekistan, Uzbekistan is the former Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic and is the most populated of all the Central Asian states. Uzbekistan celebrated its independence on September 1, 1991. Tashkent is the capital city of Uzbekistan. Figures from 2004 showed an Uzbek population of 26,410,416. Approximately 88 percent of all Uzbeks are Muslim. In terms of area, Uzbekistan is 186,400 square miles, which makes it about the size of California. Uzbekistan is bordered by Kazakhstan on the west and south, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, Afghanistan to the south, and Turkmenistan to the south and west. Principal languages are both Uzbek and Russian. Uzbeks make up about 80 percent of the total population and are followed by Russians (5.5 percent) and Tajik (5 percent). Geographically, Uzbekistan boasts parts of the Amu Dar’ya River Valley and the Kysyl-Kum Desert. In eastern Uzbekistan the landscape includes the Tien Shan Mountain Range and the politically significant Fergana Valley. Uzbekistan also borders the environmentally troubled Aral Sea. Since 1936 Uzbekistan has also included the Kara-Kalpakia Autonomous Republic. Approximately 1.2 million people live in the KaraKalpakia Region. Uzbekistan’s Soviet era was most notable for its impact on regional agriculture. During the 1950s the Soviets completed large irrigation projects that transformed present-day Uzbekistan into a large cotton producer. During the Soviet era, the Communist Party
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controlled the politics of Uzbekistan. However, with Gorbachev’s perestroika came a nascent nationalist movement. In June 1990 the Uzbek Supreme Soviet passed a resolution of sovereignty. After the failed coup of 1991 against Gorbachev, the leader of the Uzbek Communist Party, Islam Karimov, remained silent until it was clear the putsch would be defeated. Then Karimov condemned the coup and quickly acted to ban the Communist Party in the police and the armed forces. In August of that same year, Uzbekistan declared independence. By September, Karimov had changed the Uzbek Communist Party to the People’s Democratic Party. Upon independence Karimov began to utilize a strategy of nationalism. Under Karimov’s direction, the Uzbek Supreme Soviet called for elections for December 29, 1991. Although opposition political parties were allowed, they were not permitted to act freely. In fact, Birlik, a popular opposition party, was not permitted to field a candidate for the December elections. Uzbek authorities banned the Islamic Renaissance Movement, which called for the formation of an Islamic state. Only the Erk Democratic Party provided an opposition candidate to Karimov. In the December elections, Karimov won 86 percent of the vote and the Erk candidate 12.4 percent. Soon after the election, the Erk Democratic Party was banned, and leadership in the party fled to Turkey. December 1994 brought parliamentary elections to Uzbekistan. The recently amended constitution called for 250 deputies—in place of the 500 formerly seated. Political opposition was not permitted. The two main political parties were the ruling People’s Democratic Party, which won 205 seats, and the governmentcreated National Progress Party, which won six seats. Presidential elections scheduled for 1996 were postponed until 2000 with a 1995 referendum. Karimov won another five-year term in January 2000 with 91.9 percent of the popular vote. The only other option for voters was Karimov’s hand-selected opposition, Abdulhafiz Dzhalalov. Dzhalalov headed the People’s Democratic Party—the party Karimov ran until 1996. Another referendum followed in January 2002 and delayed the scheduled 2005 elections until 2007. A critical issue facing Uzbekistan is militant Islam. In his first few years in office, Karimov encouraged Islam. However, a 1997 attack on four policemen in the city of Namangan placed the Karimov regime on notice that radical Islam might be a potential problem. The Islamic threat became even more pronounced following a February 1999 assassination attempt on Karimov. On the way to a cabinet meeting, Karimov’s
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motorcade was attacked. Although the president was uninjured, 16 were killed and 80 others wounded. The government immediately placed blame on Islamic extremism. Observers of the Uzbek government claimed that the Islamic threat was one that was exaggerated by Karimov in order to rationalize further crackdowns on Islam. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, Islam Karimov was one of the first to offer his country’s support. Uzbekistan ultimately offered use of its airspace and modern air bases and allowed the United States limited basing privileges. For its part, the United States served Uzbek interests with its attack on the Taliban in Afghanistan. Islamic militants launched a number of suicide bombings in Tashkent from March 28, 2004, to April 1, 2004. Security officials claim that the attackers were trained in Pakistan and had links to al-Qaeda. In addition, wider attacks were most certainly planned, as law enforcement seized 50 suicide belts from one Uzbek woman. Government figures claim that the attacks resulted in the death of 47, including 10 policemen and 33 militants. Initially the government blamed the Hizb ut-Tahrir. Soon after, a theory emerged that the attacks were the result of a resurgent IMU. Law enforcement officials finally settled on the arrest of members of Jamoat, which translates into “community.” Jamoat is believed to be the remnants of IMU cadres. In July 2004 further attacks commenced against the Israeli and U.S. embassies and the Uzbek General Prosecutor’s Office. The relationship between Uzbekistan and the United States certainly was strained in May 2005. During that month Uzbekistan is said to have massacred demonstrators in the Fergana town of Andijhan. Karimov claimed that the uprising was a result of the United States’s and nongovernmental organizations’ attempts to replicate the successful revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan. By July 2005 Karimov served notice that the United States should cease operations at the Uzbek air base at Karshi-Khanabad within 180 days. The government of Uzbekistan is a presidential-parliamentary system, but the president has been dominant since independence. Karimov ruled initially through the Uzbek Communist Party and then changed its name to the People’s Democratic Party. Karimov resigned party leadership in 1996 in order to show a semblance of pluralism. However, all five political parties represented in the Oliy Majlis—the parliament—are from parties created by Karimov. In addition, of the 250 seats in the Oliy Majlis, the largest bloc is reserved for local government representatives.
Uzbekistan is heavily reliant on agriculture and, in particular, on the growth of cotton. The majority of its cotton ends up being exported. Uzbek cotton also accounts for two-thirds of all Central Asian cotton, and Uzbekistan is the second-largest exporter of cotton in the world. Most of the food consumed by Uzbeks is produced in the many small farms throughout the country. All Uzbek agriculture is heavily dependent upon the irrigation system, a remnant from the Soviet era. Uzbekistan also boasts large reserves of coal, natural gas, and petroleum. Russia is a large consumer of Uzbek gas. Mining of gold is also a source of income for Uzbekistan. In 2001 gold exports made up 9.6 percent of the Uzbek GDP. Copper, zinc, and lead ores are mined, and uranium is also produced in Uzbekistan. The partnership between Uzbekistan and the United States in the war on terror brought economic relief to Uzbekistan. In November 2001 the United States offered Karimov a $100 million grant in order to make Uzbek currency fully convertible. James Wolfensohn of the World Bank visited Tashkent in April 2002 and offered $350 million to fund infrastructure projects over two years and $40 million to aid in improving water supplies. Yet the economy of Uzbekistan, like those of others in Central Asia, is troubled and operates at levels considerably lower than it did during the Soviet era. See also Soviet Union, dissolution of the. Further reading: Anderson, John. The International Politics of Central Asia. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997; Garnett, Sherman W., Alexander Rahr and Koji Watanabe. The New Central Asia: In Search of Stability. New York: Trilateral Commission, 2000; Library of Congress, Federal Research Division. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan: Country Studies. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1997; Olcott, Martha Brill. Kazakhstan: Unfulfilled Promise. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2002; Shoemaker, M. Wesley. Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States. 35th ed. Harpers Ferry, WV: Stryker-Post Publications, 2004. Matthew H. Wahlert
Chávez, Hugo
(1954– ) Venezuelan president and revolutionary Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, president of Venezuela from February 1999 to the present writing in 2008, ranks as one of the most influential and controversial
figures in post–cold war Latin America. Distinguished by his left-populist policies, strident anti-imperialism and anti-neoliberalism, promotion of Latin American integration—often bombastic and polarizing rhetoric—and volcanic energy, and the driving force behind Venezuela’s so-called Bolivarian revolution, Chávez elicits strong emotions among both supporters and detractors. A key debate among scholars is whether his “democratic socialism” will lead to a populist dictatorship characteristic of Latin America in the 20th century, or whether his government can pursue a populist social revolution while maintaining the democratic political structures that have endured since the days of Rómulo Betancourt in the late 1950s. Born on July 28, 1954, in the city of Sabaneta (pop. 20,000), capital of the southwestern plains state of Barinas, and of Spanish, Indian, and African ancestry, he was the second son of school teachers, receiving a good education. At age 17 he entered the Venezue lan Academy of Military Sciences, where he graduated four years later as a sub-lieutenant. He attended Simón Bolívar University in Caracas, sharpening his political views on pan-American nationalism (“Bolivarianism”), socialism, and anti-imperialism. For the next 17 years he served in the military, rising from counterinsurgency paratrooper and platoon commander to lieutenant colonel and instructor at the Venezuelan Military Academy. On July 24, 1983, on the bicentennial of the birth of Simón Bolívar, Chávez and his comrades secretly founded the Bolivarian Revolutionary Army (Ejército Revolucionario Bolivariano, or ERB-200) with the goal of launching a Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela. On February 4, 1992, in the midst of widespread popular disaffection for the government of President Carlos Andrés Pérez and his free-market reforms (manifest most dramatically in the massive street protests and riots known as El Caracazo, in February 1989), the ERB launched a failed coup attempt. Appearing on national television, Chávez became an overnight celebrity for his vigorous denunciations of the government’s corruption and cronyism before he and other coup leaders were jailed. Two years later he was released in an amnesty by the government of President Rafael Caldera. Reorganizing the ERB as the Fifth Republic Movement (Movimiento Quinto República, or MQR) and campaigning on his Bolivarian platform, in December 1998 he won the presidency with 56 percent of the popular vote. Once in office, Chávez embarked on a wideranging program of social, economic, and political
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reforms. In 1999, after seeing many of his initiatives blocked by the National Assembly, he oversaw the writing and promulgation of a new constitution, which granted the executive greater powers and renamed the country the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (República Bolivariana de Venezuela). Reelected in July 2000 to a six-year term, he deepened the reforms of his first months in office. In spring 2002 an opposition movement coalesced demanding his ouster, and between April 11 and April 13, he was briefly removed from office before massive street protests led to his reinstatement. In August 2004 he triumphed decisively in a national referendum intended to recall him, and in December 2006 won a second six-year presidential term with 63 percent of the vote. In a December 2007 referendum, voters rejected Chávez’s proposed changes to Venezuela’s constitution, hurting the momentum of his socialist program. Further reading: Ellner, Steven, and Daniel Hellinger, eds. Venezuelan Politics in the Chávez Era: Class, Polarization, and Conflict. Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, 2004; Gott, Richard. Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution. London: Verso, 2005. London: Verso, 2001; ———. In the Shadow of the Liberator: The Impact of Hugo Chávez on Venezuela and Latin America. Michael J. Schroeder
Chiang Ching-kuo
(1910–1988) Chinese political leader and reformer Chiang Ching-kuo was Chiang Kai-shek’s eldest son. In 1925 he set out to study in the Soviet Union with other young Chinese men and women during a period when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was allied with the Soviet Union and a United Front with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Chiang Chingkuo’s fortunes changed dramatically in 1927 when his father ended the United Front and purged the CCP from the KMT. In retaliation, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin refused to allow Ching-kuo to return to China, although other students were allowed to repatriate. Thus he remained in the Soviet Union, where he worked in various factories and mines and married a Russian woman. Early in 1937 he was suddenly summoned to Moscow and was told by top Soviet officials that he could return to China. The reason was Japan’s
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imminent attack on China and the Soviet realization that if China fell, the Soviet Union would be Japan’s next victim. Chiang Kai-shek immediately began to train his son in government, initially at the county level in regions just behind the battlefront during World War II and then progressively promoting him to bigger tasks both on the mainland and, after the Nationalists lost the civil war to the CCP in 1949, on Taiwan. In 1965 he was appointed minister of defense; later he was appointed vice-premier, and he became premier in 1972, from which post he initiated many important projects that promoted Taiwan’s rapid economic growth while ensuring an equitable distribution of income. Chiang Kai-shek died in 1975 during his fifth term as president of the Republic of China. Vice President Yen Chia-kan served out the remaining years of Chiang Kai-shek’s term and retired. Chiang Ching-kuo was elected president by the National Assembly in 1978 and was reelected for a second sixyear term in 1984. Chiang Ching-kuo’s stay in the Soviet Union made him an opponent of the communist system. His many years as a laborer also gave him a populist outlook. He was an approachable and popular leader. More important, he began political reforms during his second term. He saw the political turmoil against the autocratic regimes of the Philippines and South Korea and understood that the prosperous and educated people of Taiwan yearned for democracy. Thus he initiated overall political reforms that ended martial law and censorship, legalized opposition political parties, and implemented free elections. Finally, with his health failing, he promised that none of his family would succeed him as political leader. After Chiang Ching-kuo’s death, political reforms continued on Taiwan that made it into a democracy, in notable contrast to the communist government of the People’s Republic of China. Although Taiwan’s economic miracle began under Chiang Kai-shek, the credit for its continuation and peaceful political reforms belongs to Chiang Ching-kuo. Further reading: Myers, Ramon H., ed. Two Societies In Opposition: The Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China After Forty Years. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990; Taylor, Jay. The Generalissimo’s Son; Chiang Ching-kuo and the Revolutions in China and Taiwan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur
“Chicago Boys” (Chilean economists, 1973–1980s) A group of some 25 like-minded Chilean economists trained mainly at the School of Economy at the Pontifical Catholic University (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) in Santiago, and, steeped in the free-market theories of U.S. economist and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics, the “Chicago Boys” played a pivotal role in transforming Chile’s economy during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. Chicago School economists were influential throughout much of Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s, a period witnessing the growing influence of neoliberalism as espoused by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other U.S.-dominated transnational financial institutions. The Chicago Boys, like the IMF, decried the fiscal excesses of populist and socialist governments and promoted open markets, privatization of state-owned industries, reduced government expenditures, deregulation, limiting the rights and bargaining power of labor unions, and increased foreign investment as ways to promote economic growth and national development. These years saw similar developments in the United States and Europe, personified in U.S. president Ronald Reagan and British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Among the most influential of the Chicago Boys were Jorge Cauas, minister of finance (MF), 1975–77; Sergio de Castro (MF), 1977–82; Pablo Baraona, minister of economy (ME), 1976–79; Roberto Kelly, ME, 1978–79; José Piñera, minister of labor and pensions, 1978–80, and minister of mining, 1980–81; Álvaro Bardón, ME, 1982–83; Hernán Büchi, MF, 1985–89; Juan Carlos Méndez, Budget Director (BD), 1975–81; Emilio Sanfuentes, adviser to Central Bank; Juan Villarzú, BD, 1974–75; and Sergio de la Cuadra, MF, 1982–83. Following their policy prescriptions, the Chilean government under Pinochet privatized social security, pensions, banks, and most state industries; slashed public subsidies and services; and cut taxes, especially for upper-income brackets. Their reforms generated a severe economic contraction and sharply curtailed inflation in the mid-1970s, followed by robust growth in the late 1970s, a deep recession (following a broader global economic downturn) in the early 1980s, and renewed growth in the mid- and late 1980s. The average growth rate from 1973 to 1990 was 3.5 percent, nominally higher than in most Latin American countries. By 1990 the economy was growing rapidly, though economic
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inequality had increased, along with economic hardship among the bottom income brackets, with 44 percent of families living below the poverty line. These and related results of the Chicago Boys’ radical laissez-faire economic restructurings have sparked wide-ranging debates among scholars, while Chileans have continued to grapple with the effects of the free-market reforms. Neoliberalism’s defenders looked to Chile’s privatization of social security as a model for other countries, for example, while its critics pointed to the system’s gaps and insufficient coverage for roughly half of the country’s labor force. In early 2005 all of the candidates in Chile’s presidential campaign agreed that “the country’s much vaunted and much copied privatized pension system needs immediate repair.” Further reading: Borzutzky, Sylvia, and Lois Hecht Oppenheim, eds. After Pinochet: The Chilean Road to Democracy and the Market. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2006; Gill, Indermit S., Truman Packard, and Juan Yermo. Keeping the Promise of Social Security in Latin America. Washington DC: World Bank, 2005; Valdes, Juan Gabriel. Pinochet’s Economists: The Chicago School of Economics in Chile. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Michael J. Schroeder
China, human rights and dissidents in In 1949 the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) established the People’s Republic of China (PRC), a totalitarian regime. Although the CCP denied human rights, as understood in the West, to all its citizens, it had a particularly hostile relationship with the intellectuals, whom it distrusted. The repression was especially severe during Mao Zedong’s (Mao Tse-tung’s) rule. Mao died in 1976 and bequeathed a bankrupt nation to his successor, Deng Xiaoping (Teng Hsiao-p’ing). Deng sought to pull China out of its economic disaster by reforms called the “Four Modernizations”—of agriculture, industry, science, and defense. He also somewhat relaxed intellectual controls in 1978 by allowing a Democracy Wall in the capital city Beijing (Peking), where citizens could air their grievances. Deng was surprised by the extent and bitterness of the complaints and stunned by an article posted by a young man named Wei Jingsheng entitled “The Fifth Modernization: Democracy.” Wei (born 1950) was the son of committed communist parents and had lived a privileged life in Beijing.
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His travels during the Cultural Revolution exposed him to the horrors and inequities of a regime that condemned millions to death by man-made famines and that denied justice to ordinary people. His article argued that the Four Modernizations were not enough without a fifth—democracy. For this he was arrested, convicted of “counterrevolution” in a show trial, and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. He became China’s most famous political prisoner. Wei was released in 1993, one-anda-half years short of serving his full term—not because the regime had come to accept international standards of human rights but because it wanted to host the 2000 Olympics in Beijing. He was rearrested and sentenced to another long jail term in 1994 for speaking out for human rights, but was released in 1997 and exiled to the United States. Countless other Chinese were tortured, imprisoned, and killed for seeking religious freedom or for other perceived offenses against the Communist Party. One was Harry Wu (born 1937), who began to suffer severe persecution as a college student. After becoming a U.S. citizen, Wu worked to expose the Chinese government practice of imprisoning political dissenters in brutal labor camps and selling their products and the organs of the prisoners to the United States and other nations. Two world-famous victims were intellectual leaders Fang Lizhi (Fang Li-tzu, born 1936) and Liu Binyan (Liu Ping-yen, born 1925). Fang was China’s leading astrophysicist and vice president of the prestigious Chinese University of Science and Technology. For supporting students’ demands for genuine elections, for advocating democracy and intellectual freedom, and for demanding that Wei Jingsheng be released, he was dismissed from his positions in 1987 and expelled from the CCP. When President George H. W. Bush invited Fang and his wife to a state dinner that he hosted during a visit to China in 1989, the Chinese leaders sent police to prevent them from attending. Liu Binyan was a famous literary figure and also an investigative reporter for the newspaper the People’s Daily. For exposing the massive abuses of power by the CCP, he was dismissed from the party. Their fame protected Fang and Liu from arrest, but both were exiled—to Great Britain and the United States, respectively. Among the four, Wei, Fang, and Liu began as committed communists and later became determined opponents of communism. Wei and Wu suffered long and harsh imprisonment. Millions of other Chinese, named and unnamed, continued to suffer the denial of their human rights.
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See also Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China (1966–1976); Hundred Flowers Campaign in China (1956–1957). Further reading: Binyan, Liu. “Tell the World” What Happened in China and Why. Translated by Henry L. Epstein. New York: Pantheon Books, 1989; Salisbury, Harrison E. The New Emperors: China in the Era of Mao and Deng. Boston: Little, Brown, 1992; Wei Jingsheng. The Courage to Stand Alone. New York: Penguin, USA, 1997; Wu, Harry, with George Vecsey. Troublemaker, One Man’s Crusade against China’s Cruelty. New York: Time Books, 1996. Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur
China, People’s Republic of On October 1, 1949, the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung), proclaimed the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) upon victory over the Kuomintang in a civil war. Beijing (Peking) became the capital of the new government. Since then, the CCP has ruled China as a one-party state, although several minor political parties were allowed to exist. The PRC aligned itself with the Soviet Union in foreign policy, signing a treaty of alliance and mutual aid in 1950 under which China received loans and technical help from the Soviet Union. The BeijingMoscow axis began to crack toward the end of the 1950s because of multiple reasons; by the mid-1960s border conflicts had broken out between them. To counterbalance the Soviet threat, China began a rapprochement with the United States that culminated in a visit by President Richard Nixon to China in 1972 and the establishment of full diplomatic relations between China and the United States in 1979. The PRC also joined the United Nations in 1971 as a permanent member of the Security Council, replacing the Republic of China (ROC), or Taiwan. Since the 1970s the PRC has replaced the ROC in most international organizations. Upon its establishment, the CCP immediately undertook violent land reform, killing millions of landlords and redistributing land to the cultivators. However, the peasants were forced to give up their newly acquired land in 1953 to join collective farms under the First Five-Year Plan, copied from that of the Soviet Union. Collective farming continued in varied formats until Mao’s death in 1976. Due to China’s failing economy
and the severe distress of the farming population, Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping (Teng Hsiao-p’ing), dismantled the collective farms and allowed individual farmers to work private plots, although the state continued to own the land. Productivity and the standard of living among farmers increased dramatically as a result. With the adoption of private enterprise in most industries, however, the standard of living of Chinese farmers lagged far behind that of people in the rapidly expanding urban sector, especially in the advanced coastal provinces. China underwent catastrophic political and economic turmoil under Mao’s radical leadership, most notably during the Great Leap Forward and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Deng Xiaoping was, by contrast to Mao, pragmatic in dealing with the economy, but he brooked no political opposition, as the bloody repression of student protesters in the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 demonstrated. After Deng ousted several putative successors who failed to conform to his ideas, the succession among CCP leaders was peaceful. In 2002 Hu Jintao became chairman of the CCP and president of China. In 2005 China had an estimated population of 1.3 billion people; the largest military in the world, comprising 2.25 million soldiers; and the third-largest and fastest-growing economy in the world. See also Hundred Flowers Campaign in China (1956–1957); Sino-Soviet Treaty (1950). Further reading: MacFarquhar, Roderick, and John K. Fairbank, eds. Cambridge History of China, The People’s Republic, Part 1: The Emergence of Revolutionary China, 1946–1949, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987; ———. Cambridge History of China, The People’s Republic, Vol. 15, The People’s Republic of China, Part 2: Revolutions Within the Chinese Revolution, 1966–1978. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991; Salisbury, Harrison E. The New Emperors: China in the Era of Mao and Deng. Boston: Little, Brown, 1992. Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur
Chinese-Vietnamese conflict For over 2,000 years China directly or indirectly ruled Vietnam until 1885. The close relationship between the two peoples led to the sinicizing of Vietnamese society. After the end of World War II and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the example
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Son. About 250,000 Chinese troops were deployed, together with militia, the air force, and a naval detachment, to the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea in the event of Soviet intervention to aid Vietnam. All of the fighting took place in the forested mountainous region that marks the border. Eventually the battlehardened Vietnamese regrouped against the advance of the PLA. The Soviet Union declined to respond to Vietnamese requests for aid. After a limited advance China declared that it had punished Vietnam and withdrew. It threatened to return, however, should Vietnam’s actions warrant further punishment. This showed that Communist nations harbored historic resentments against one another: Vietnam’s territorial ambition in Southeast Asia, and China’s attitude toward small states in areas of its historic influence. The conflict put Vietnam firmly in the Soviet camp until the end of the cold war. The fighting continued at a low level along the border.
Chinese vice premier Deng Xiaoping (right) at the White House in 1979, the same year China attacked Vietnam.
of the Chinese revolution persuaded many Vietnamese that they could liberate their country with similar political goals. During the subsequent wars against the French and the Americans, Communist North Vietnam received material as well as political support from China. Some among the Chinese leadership felt that the Vietnamese had been insufficiently grateful for the aid they had received. Assistance from China and other Communist-bloc countries contributed to Communist North Vietnam’s victory over South Vietnam in 1975. Unified Vietnam became the dominant power in Indochina. In 1979 Vietnamese troops entered Cambodia to oust the Khmer Rouge regime in that country. China viewed this as an example of Vietnamese expansionism. China also resented Vietnam’s ill treatment of ethnic Chinese residents in the country, and Vietnam’s closeness to the Soviet Union, China’s rival for leadership in the Communist bloc. Thus the Chinese army (the People’s Liberation Army, or PLA) attacked Vietnam in February 1979. Caught by surprise, the Vietnamese army lost ground, and the PLA successfully achieved the first part of its plan, which was to capture the provincial towns of Cao Bang and Lao Cai and then advance on Lang
Further reading: Womack, Brantly. China and Vietnam: The Politics of Asymmetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006; Zhang, Xiaoming. “China’s 1979 War with Vietnam: A Reassessment.” China Quarterly (December 2005). John Walsh
Civil Rights movement, U.S. When Harry Truman assumed the presidency after the death of Franklin Roosevelt in 1944, he had more important concerns than civil rights. His first priority was finishing the wars in Europe and the Far East. He also confronted the decision over whether or not to use the atomic bomb. The end of World War II saw the onset of the cold war. Still, in 1945 and 1946, civil rights was not totally forgotten. In 1945 the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC)—established by Roosevelt through executive order under pressure from A. Philip Randolph’s threatened March on Washington—was involved in trying to end discrimination in a Washington, D.C., transportation company. Truman was unable to convince Congress to finance the FEPC. He did, however, establish a committee in 1946 to examine violence against African Americans. The committee, stacked with liberals Truman expected would develop a strong to shocking civil rights statement, issued “To Secure These Rights” in October 1947. The report called for the extension of
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full citizenship rights to all Americans, regardless of race, color, creed, or national origin. In his State of the Union speeches of 1947 and 1948, Truman called for adoption of the committee’s recommendations. For Truman, it was a matter of justice in a world divided between free and communist states. On July 26, 1948, Truman issued Executive Order 9981, ending segregation in the armed forces, and Executive Order 9980, mandating fair employment in the civil service. After resisting the presidential order for two years, the military began implementing desegregation, but discrimination in the officer corps remained strong, and few blacks served as officers. In the Korean War, many more blacks served in combat in integrated units than had served in World War II. A further executive order in 1951 established the Committee on Government Contract Compliance (CGCC), which was to require that all potential suppliers of goods to the Department of Defense have an equal employment policy. The CGCC lacked enforcement powers. For many, a major turning point in how African Americans were viewed by the country at large came with the ending of segregation in Major League Baseball in 1947. When he took the field on April 15 for the Brooklyn Dodgers that year, Jackie Robinson became the first African American to play professional Major League Baseball in the modern era. While Robinson endured abuse from fans, other teams, and even his own teammates, he went on to win the first-ever Rookie of the Year award, and over the course of his career, was named to the All-Star team six times. The American scene, however, was changing slowly. Murders and lynchings of African Americans still occurred in the 1950s, and commonly the murders went unpunished. Emmett Till, a teenager from Chicago, was visiting Money, Mississippi, in 1955. Till purportedly whistled at a white woman. For that offense, he was murdered brutally. His mother had an opencasket funeral so the mourners could see the beating the boy had endured before his two white abductors threw him into the Tallahatchie River on August 28. Till’s murderers were quickly arrested and acquitted. This blatant disregard for justice fired northern sentiment for reform. Before 1955 the Civil Rights movement had focused on the courts. Although the approach had won the landmark victory in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, the Supreme Court had failed to provide any implementation target or tools. Local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
chapters in the South attempted to register voters and protest discrimination, but their efforts were usually uncoordinated and unsuccessful in the face of intimidation and harassment by local authorities. Rosa Parks further fired the impulse for change. On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, she was arrested for failure to yield her bus seat to white passengers. Her trial and conviction for violating the local segregated transit ordinance catalyzed the local black community. Fifty African-American leaders formed the Montgomery Improvement Association, which led the 381-day Montgomery Bus Boycott that resulted in the repeal of the ordinance. The success in Montgomery was followed by a successful boycott in Tallahassee, Florida, but its greater importance is that it brought national prominence to the minister brought in to lead it, Martin Luther King, Jr. The successful boycott encouraged civil rights leaders to shift from the old civil rights tactic of litigation to a greater emphasis on direct action. Direct action required mass mobilization, led by local churches and community organizations, and nonviolent resistance as well as civil disobedience. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was an early success. Sit-ins, freedom rides, and other local action followed during the decade between 1955 and 1965. After Montgomery, the Montgomery Improvement Association—veteran leaders of the Baton Rouge and Tallahassee boycotts—and other black activists created the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957. The SCLC eschewed the chapter structure of the NAACP, instead providing ad hoc training to those who fought segregation at the local level. In 1957, in the South Carolina Sea Islands, Septima Clark, Bernice Robinson, and Esau Jenkins began the first Citizenship Schools to give blacks the literacy they needed to pass voting tests. The number of eligible voters on St. John Island tripled. The SCLC took over the program and spread it to Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee. That same year, the Little Rock, Arkansas, school board decided to integrate in accordance with Brown. The NAACP had put pressure on Little Rock because the civil rights organization thought a test case would have better success there than in the Deep South. Arkansas had desegregated a couple of small towns, including Fayetteville and Hoxie, and it had a progressive reputation. It also had a governor with a progressive reputation. Orval Faubus, however, caved in to the conservative wing of the state Democratic Party and called the Arkansas National Guard to prevent deseg
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A group of African Americans march on Washington, D.C., in 1963 in protest against discrimination, for equal rights, and for an end to segregation. Martin Luther King, Jr., influenced such marches with his policy of nonviolent protest.
regation of the high school. President Eisenhower was committed to preventing the usurpation of a federal power, so Faubus’s resistance in Little Rock led to a federal-state confrontation resulting in the nationalization of the National Guard. Eventually, after Faubus backed off and then shut down the schools, integration was pushed through. The sit-in movement began in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960 and spread to Nashville, Tennessee; Atlanta, Georgia; and elsewhere in the South—as well as to the North and West. The initial spark was the decision of local college students to eat where they shopped. Complying with local law, counter personnel refused to serve them. The demonstrators suffered arrest and physical abuse, but they refused to post bail so that the local jails would feel the financial burden. When released from jail, civil rights activists returned to the lunch counters again and again until finally the counters desegregated. Sit-ins spread from lunch counters to beaches, libraries, and everywhere that blacks were denied access on account of race.
Some sit-in veterans created the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960. SNCC began freedom rides in 1961, which were bus trips through the Deep South to force desegregation of bus terminals as required by federal law. The riders faced a bus bombing in Anniston, Alabama; an attack by Klansmen in Birmingham; and a mob assault in Montgomery. There were injuries—some serious—but the riders persisted. In Jackson, Mississippi, they were jailed in squalor—and occasionally beaten. Other riders had to do forced labor in 100-degree heat. Some ended up in Parchman Penitentiary. In 1962 the movement shifted to Mississippi, where the SNCC representative, Robert Moses, united all the state civil rights organizations into the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) for the purpose of doorto-door voter education and student recruitment. While the COFO effort was underway, James Meredith won the legal right to attend the University of Mississippi. Three times he tried to enter, and three times Governor Ross R. Barnett refused him. The Fifth Circuit Court of
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Appeals found Barnett and his lieutenant governor in contempt, and U.S. marshals escorted Meredith onto the campus. White riots ensued. Two people died, 28 marshals were shot, and 160 others were injured. The Mississippi highway patrol withdrew from the campus, so President John F. Kennedy sent the army to control the campus and allow Meredith to attend classes. In 1961 and 1962 King went to Albany, Georgia, to assist in the Albany Movement, which aimed at ending segregation in all phases of the city. The police in Albany reacted not with violence but with mass arrests, including King in December 1961. City leaders came to an agreement with local prominent African Americans: If King left Albany, the city would—among other things—desegregate the buses and set up a biracial committee. King left, and the city did not fulfill its promises, forcing King’s return. He was arrested again in July 1962, and in August agreed to leave the city and stop the protests. He blamed the failure of the Albany Movement on its broad scope rather than a specific aspect of segregation and discrimination. With Albany dogging him, King needed a victory. He went to Birmingham in 1963 with the Albany lessons in mind. Rather than total desegregation, the SCLC sought a more limited desegregation of downtown businesses. The local commissioner of public safety was Eugene “Bull” Connor. The SCLC used sit-ins, kneel-ins, marches, and other nonviolent techniques. The city obtained an injunction, the SCLC refused to quit, and King and others were arrested on April 12, 1963. King wrote his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” on April 16, but the campaign was faltering until organizers, desperate for bodies, decided to put high school students on the streets. On May 2, over 1,000 students demonstrated, and over 600 ended up in jail. The next day another 1,000 students appeared, and Connor ordered dogs and fire hoses to be turned on them. Television covered it all. Kennedy forced the SCLC and local businesses to reach a settlement. On May 10 they agreed: Downtown public accommodations were to be desegregated and a committee established to end discrimination in hiring. Also, the prisoners were released, and black-white communications channels were established. Four months later, Klansmen bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, killing four girls. The summer of 1963 saw George Wallace’s attempt to prevent desegregation of the University of Alabama and Kennedy’s sending sufficient force to enroll two students. The evening that the University of Alabama desegregated, on June 11, Kennedy made a major civil rights address on television and radio. The next day
Medgar Evers, who had fought to desegregate the University of Mississippi law school, was murdered. On June 19, Kennedy submitted his long-awaited Civil Rights Bill. In August A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin led the March on Washington—from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial—despite Kennedy’s efforts to get them to call the march off. All the major civil rights and progressive labor organizations were involved, as were other liberal leaders. The demands were “meaningful civil rights laws, a massive federal works program, full and fair employment, decent housing, the right to vote, and adequate integrated education.” Most important was the new civil rights law, which was stalled in Congress. More than 200,000 gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial to hear King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and other speeches criticizing the administration’s failure to enact civil rights laws and to protect southern civil rights workers. After the march, Kennedy had King and other leaders over to the White House for a chat. political weight The Civil Rights Bill was going nowhere until Kennedy died on November 22, 1963, and Lyndon B. Johnson put all his political weight (and Kennedy’s martyrdom) behind its passage. In 1964 COFO continued its dangerous work in Mississippi. “Freedom Summer” involved locals and northern students in voter registration and voter education (Freedom Schools), and the organization of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). Three civil rights workers were murdered in Neshoba County on June 21, 1964. An FBI investigation found not only the three bodies but also others of blacks who had disappeared over the years without attracting more than local attention. During the six weeks between the disappearance of the three and the discovery of their bodies, Johnson used the case to bring pressure for enactment of the Civil Rights Act, which passed on July 2. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 barred discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and education. At Selma, Alabama, the SCLC intervened in 1965 after locals struggled to get voters registered through a SNCC campaign. Hosea Williams of the SCLC and John Lewis of the SNCC attempted to lead a march to Montgomery, but they were stopped at the Edmund Pettus Bridge by state and local officers, who attacked with clubs, tear gas, and whips. National coverage matched that of the Birmingham children’s campaign.
Local reaction included a murder by whites. Johnson used the violence to push enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Signed into law on August 6, the act outlawed poll taxes and literacy tests and other devices to bar voting by blacks. It provided for federal supervision of voter registration in states and districts with a pattern of discrimination. Within months, a quarter of a million new black voters were created, mostly by federal examiners who replaced local registrars. Voter registration in the South more than doubled in four years. Mississippi’s black turnout in 1965 was 74 percent. Black turnout in 1969 was 92 percent in Tennessee, almost 78 percent in Arkansas, and 73 percent in Texas. Blacks began voting out those who had plagued them during their struggles against segregation. And they began voting in blacks they hoped were more sympathetic to their needs. In 1989 there were 7,200 elected black officials in the United States, more than 4,800 of them in the South. In 1965 about 100 were in elective office in all of the United States. Blacks were sheriffs, mayors, and county, state, and national officials. radicalization Voting rights failed to provide jobs. As the nation turned from civil rights to the war in Vietnam, and as King and other civil rights leaders split with the Johnson administration over foreign policy and the failure of economic justice at home, the Civil Rights movement faded. Blacks radicalized—SNCC threw out its white members, and the Black Panthers stressed not only Black Power but black self-help. Blacks rioted in American cities between 1965 and 1968. When King went to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968 to support a sanitation workers’ strike, he was murdered. By 1967 22 percent of black students in southern and border states were in integrated schools. Still, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders of 1968 reported that the United States was continuing to move toward a two-society status, separate and unequal. Housing segregation was addressed in the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Richard Nixon’s administration slowed integration by leaving it to the courts rather than his administration. After the Supreme Court ruled in Miliken v. Bradley (1974) that cities could not expect to use suburbs to desegregate, white flight began resegregating America’s major cities. The absence of federal assistance and persistent residential segregation contributed to resegregation. By the late 1990s, a third of black students were in schools that were 90 percent nonwhite.
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During World War II, many African Americans migrated north, following jobs in war industries, but most of the jobs they were able to get were menial and paid very little. This created greater racial problems in these northern cities; blacks were forced by de facto segregation into slums that were plagued by high unemployment and crime. Additionally, the slum areas were patrolled by predominantly white police forces who many felt threatened rather than protected the neighborhood. The area schools tended to be all black and terribly underfunded. Frustrated by these conditions, urban African Americans rose in protest. The first riot was in Harlem in the summer of 1964. A white policeman shot a black youth, and a mob demanded the suspension of the officer. When that did not happen, the mob rampaged through the neighborhood and destroyed Jewish-owned stores and much else that was not black-owned. Brooklyn’s black BedfordStuyvesant neighborhood and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, had riots for similar reasons that year. After passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, expectations were that there would be celebration. Instead there was violence. California was among the states that refused to implement the fair housing element of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The Civil Rights Act of 1968 required fair housing. Malcolm X was killed in 1965. The black ghetto riots were the most prolonged period of civil disturbance in the United States since the Civil War. Tens of thousands of National Guardsmen were required to reestablish order. Blacks began taking out their frustrations on police by murdering racist and brutal “honkies” and “pigs.” In 1966 nearly all major U.S. cities endured riots by blacks taking an independent “black power” stance, no longer following the white-black integrated approach of the NAACP and SCLC. Black power was the slogan of Stokely Carmichael, leader of the SNCC. Its approach was similar to that of the Black Panthers, formed in Oakland in 1966 and nationally prominent by 1968. Racial stereotyping and simple personal racism remains. Interracial tension and social problems remain, which are especially pronounced in the inner cities. Sometimes the cities erupt, as in New Jersey in the late 1990s where racial profiling led to public controversy. And riots do still occur. Note the 1992 riots in Los Angeles after the Rodney King verdict. Further reading: Dudziak, Mary L. Cold War Civil Rights. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000; Gardner, Michael R. Harry Truman and Civil Rights. Carbondale:
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Southern Illinois University Press, 2002; Herman, Max. “The Newark and Detroit Riots of 1967.” http://www.67riots.rut gers.edu/introduction.html (cited February 2006). John H. Barnhill
Clinton, Bill (1946– ) and Hillary Rodham (1947– ) U.S. politicians Bill (William Jefferson) Clinton was the 42nd president of the United States, in office from 1993 until 2001. Hil lary Clinton was the First Lady during that time, and was a Democratic Party candidate in the 2008 presidential elections. William Jefferson Clinton was born on August 19, 1946, as William Jefferson Blythe III, in Hope, Arkansas. His father, William Jefferson Blythe, Jr., was a traveling salesman who died in a car accident some three months before his son was born. After his death, his widow, Virginia Dell, married Roger Clinton, who was a partner in an automobile dealership, and when he was 14, Bill adopted his stepfather’s surname. It was meeting John F. Kennedy and listening to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s I “Have a Dream” speech in 1963 that convinced him that he should enter politics. Bill Clinton went to the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, receiving a bachelor of science in foreign service in 1968. He then was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University in England. On his return to the United States, Clinton went to Yale Law School, where he met Hillary Rodham. They were married on October 11, 1975, and their only child, Chelsea, was born on February 27, 1980. Hillary Diane Rodham was born on October 26, 1947, at Edgewater Hospital, Chicago, Illinois. She attended Maine South High School and grew up in a conservative Republican family. At the age of 16 she campaigned for Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. Hillary Rodham then went to Wellesley College, where she developed liberal inclinations and graduated in 1969. In 1971 she worked for Senator Walter Mondale’s subcommittee on migrant workers and in 1972 started working for Senator George McGovern’s 1972 presidential election campaign. The Clintons returned to Arkansas after completing their studies at Yale, and Bill became a law professor at the University of Arkansas. In the following year, 1974, he ran for the House of Representatives but was defeated. In 1976
Despite his popularity, Bill Clinton’s second term in the White House was beset by scandal (with wife, Hillary, at right).
Clinton was elected attorney general of Arkansas without opposition. Two years later he was elected governor of Arkansas and, at the age of 32, was the youngest governor in the country. He spent his first term as governor working on improving schools and roads, but became unpopular over the motor vehicle tax and the escape of Cuban prisoners. In 1980 Republican Frank D. White defeated Clinton. However, in 1982 Clinton was reelected as governor and remained in office until 1992. He used these 10 years to transform Arkansas by dramatically improving the education system and introducing welfare reforms. By 1988 Clinton was being suggested as a possible presidential candidate, given his high profile in American liberal circles. He decided not to run, although he did speak at the Democratic National Convention, gaining a much wider national profile. Following the defeat of the Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis in the 1988 elections, some Democratic Party organizers felt that Clinton should run in 1992. In that election it was thought that the incumbent George H. W. Bush would win easily because of his recent victory in the Gulf War. Clinton managed a major victory in the New York primaries, and even defeated California governor Jerry Brown in his home state. The result was that Clinton easily won the Democratic Party primaries. In 1994 the Democratic Party lost control of Congress at the midterm elections, the first time in 40 years they lost control of both houses. It was the start of a bitter battle between Clinton and his new adversary Newt Gingrich. Despite losing control of Congress to the Republican Party in the middle of his first term, in 1996 Clinton easily won the presidential election,
becoming the first Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt to be reelected. Clinton’s second term in office was preoccupied, on the foreign policy front, by his attempts to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. In July 2000 Clinton brought both Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority chairman Yasir Arafat to Camp David, but the negotiations failed. On the economic front, Clinton managed to balance the federal budget for the first time since 1969. His second term in office was overshadowed by the controversy over Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Hillary Clinton stood by her husband throughout the crisis. The Republicancontrolled House of Representatives voted to impeach Clinton for lying under oath in his denial of the affair, but the Senate voted to acquit Clinton, and he remained in office until the end of his term, which he ended with a popularity approval rating of 65 percent. The result of the Monica Lewinsky affair was that Bill Clinton had to abandon his plans for reforms of the health-care system, which had been heavily supported by his wife. Throughout his presidency, Bill Clinton did much to improve the life of African Americans, who became some of his most loyal supporters. Certainly Clinton saw as one of his major successes the implementation of majority rule in South Africa, with the election of the Nelson Mandela government after a peaceful transition of power. Clinton’s secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, was also able to engage with North Korea and reduce tensions in Northeast Asia. After completing his second term as president, Bill Clinton opened his office in the Harlem district of New York, showing his affinity for African Americans, and helped Hillary Clinton when she campaigned for a Senate seat for New York State. Since then, Bill Clinton has been active in campaigning for measures to prevent climate change, speaking at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Montreal, Canada, on December 9, 2005, in which he was critical of the Bush administration. Through the William J. Clinton Foundation, he has also raised money for HIV/AIDS research through the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative (CHAI). Hillary Clinton was elected to the U.S. Senate on November 7, 2000, winning 55 percent of the vote to 43 percent for her Republican opponent, Rick Lazio. During her time as First Lady, many Americans openly hated Hillary Clinton, with large numbers of Internet hate sites being established. However, her election victory proved that she was popular in her own right. She not only won in the traditionally Democratic Party base of New York City by a large majority, but she also car-
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ried suburban Westchester County and even did well in Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse, with Lazio winning in his home-base area of Long Island. In the Senate, initially Hillary Clinton took a low profile. After the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Hillary Clinton was active in gaining funding for rebuilding projects. Hillary Clinton urged for the United States to take strong military action against Afghanistan, also highlighting the ill-treatment of women in that country by the Taliban. She voted in favor of the Iraq War Resolution, but subsequently came to disagree with the prosecution of the war in Iraq. On domestic issues, Hillary Clinton followed the same liberal traditions that had characterized her husband’s presidency. On January 20, 2007, Hillary Clinton announced that she was forming a presidential exploratory committee to run as a candidate in the 2008 presidential elections and later officially pursued her electoral bid. See also presidential impeachment, u.s. Further reading: Blumenthal, Sidney. The Clinton Wars. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003; Clinton, Bill. My Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004; Clinton, Hillary Rodham. Living History. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003; Harris, John F. The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House. New York: Random House, 2005; Hyland, William G. Clinton’s World: Remaking American Foreign Policy. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999; Landau, Elaine. Bill Clinton. New York: Franklin Watts, 1993. Justin Corfield
cold war The cold war was the decade-long conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, especially characterized by its constant tensions, arms escalation, and lack of direct warfare. First coined by author George Orwell to describe a state of permanent and unresolvable war, cold war was applied to the U.S.-Soviet conflict in 1947 by Bernard Baruch, the U.S. representative to the UN Atomic Energy Commission and influential adviser to both Franklin Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Both sides often phrased the conflict as one between capitalism and communism, not simply between two states. Picking its endpoints requires some arbitrary choices, but it essentially lasted from shortly after World War II to the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union.
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Long before even the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, there were significant differences between Russia and the West—Russia was a latecomer to capitalism, abolishing serfdom only in 1861—and the transition was an awkward one that created enough ill will to make a radical revolution appealing. Before the 20th century, Russia’s imperial designs threatened those of Great Britain—a maritime rival—and Spain, which encouraged settlement in California out of fear that Russian colonists would settle the west coast traveling south from Alaska. In both cases the Western nations may have been exaggerating or misperceiving the extent of Russia’s expansionist interests—just as was likely the case with Western perceptions of the Soviet Union during the cold war. In the 20th century, the old European empires had lost their power, and the most powerful countries were the ideologically opposed Soviet Union and the United States, with its close ally the United Kingdom. These were the two world leaders that developing nations would be shaped by and recovering nations would have to ally themselves with. Given the size and power of the countries—with perhaps as an additional factor the youth of their governments, relative to those of old Europe—some historians consider the conflict inevitable. World War II had broken the faith that the Soviet Union had in the rest of the world’s willingness to leave communist states alone, and so Stalin sought to spread communism to neighboring countries in eastern Europe—Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and Poland—but remained uninvolved with communist interests in Finland, Greece, and Czechoslovakia, at least directly. Winston Churchill was the first to refer to this band of communist countries as the “Iron Curtain,” referring not only to the fortified borders between the capitalist and communist nations of Europe but to the Soviet Union’s protective layer of communist states shielding it from capitalist Europe. Meanwhile, communism grew in popularity in China, France, India, Italy, Japan, and Vietnam. Very quickly the West began to perceive communist victories as Soviet victories, and communist nations as Soviet satellites, officially or otherwise. The United Kingdom could no longer afford to govern overseas and in the 1947 partition of India had granted independence to that holding, which led to the formation of the states of India and Pakistan. The United States began increasing its overseas influence as that of the British waned. For the first few decades after World War II, the dominant focus of U.S. foreign policy was that of “con-
tainment”; the U.S. took pains to limit communist and Soviet influence to the states where it was already present and to prevent its “leaking out” to others. Many believed that, so contained, communist governments would wither and die—in contrast, the domino theory proclaimed that if one capitalist government fell, its neighbors would be next, a proposition that motivated U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, which was proclaimed a war not just over Vietnam but over all of Southeast Asia, which notably included former British and French holdings. When civil war broke out in China, the Soviet Union aided the Communists, and the United States armed and funded the Nationalists. The new People’s Republic of China, formed on October 1, 1949, became a valuable Soviet ally, while the Nationalists took control of the island of Taiwan, from where they retained their seat in the United Nations. The Soviets boycotted the United Nations Security Council as a result, and so were unable to veto Truman’s request for UN aid in prosecuting an attack on the Soviet-supported North Korean forces invading U.S.-supported South Korea. The Korean War that followed lasted three years, ending in a stalemate; into the 21st century no peace treaty had been formed between the two Koreas. As the lines between the two sides became more clearly drawn, 12 nations formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)—Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In response to this and the rearmament of West Germany, Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, formed a similar alliance of eastern European states called the Warsaw Pact: Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union. eisenhower to reagan From President Eisenhower in the 1950s to President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s the guiding light of military spending was deterrence theory, ensuring that retaliation would be swift and extraordinary. The specter of nuclear warfare dominated U.S. consciousness in these decades. In the 1950s fallout shelters were built in many towns and private homes, and educational film shorts shown in schools included the famous “Duck and Cover,” in which a talking turtle advises children to seek shelter in the event of nuclear war. Many schools and town governments held duck-andcover drills, which likely served no real purpose except to heighten fears.
Eisenhower openly worried about the inertia of the military-industrial complex as well as escalating military spending. Perhaps seeking to avoid future military conflicts, he was the first to use the CIA to overthrow governments in developing or less powerful nations that were unfriendly to U.S. policy, replacing them with nominally democratic ones. Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America became more important to the cold war than Europe. In Latin America, the United States had been involved in national politics since the 19th century, but the cold war gave a new lift to foreign policy. As the increasingly powerful lower classes in many Latin American countries gave rise to a strong left wing and socialist concerns, the United States targeted revolutions and instigated coups against left-leaning governments. Fidel Castro led the communist revolution in Cuba, only miles from the U.S. coast. The United States responded by dispatching a group of CIA-trained Cuban expatriates to land at Cuba’s Bay of Pigs and attempt to oust Castro from power. The invasion was a significant failure and provided the Soviets with a further excuse to install nuclear missiles in Cuba—balancing out those the United States had installed in Turkey and western Europe. Only when President Kennedy promised not to invade Cuba and to remove missiles from Turkey—close to the USSR—did the Soviets back down. It is still considered the moment when the two nations came closest to direct warfare. berlin wall In 1961 the Berlin Wall was built and quickly became the most vivid symbol of the cold war: The 28 miles of wall, barbed wire, and minefields separated Soviet-controlled East Berlin from U.S.-supported West Berlin. Passage across the border was heavily restricted. Families were divided, and some East Berliners were no longer able to commute to work. About 200 people died trying to cross into West Berlin; some 5,000 more succeeded. It would be nearly 30 years before the wall came down. By the end of the 1960s the prevalence of deterrence theory had led to a state of “mutually assured destruction” (MAD), in which an attack by either side would result in the destruction of both sides. Theoretically such assurance prevents that first strike, which was the logic behind limiting antiballistic missiles. Talks and, later, agreements on strategic nuclear arms (SALT I and SALT II) began in 1969. President Reagan’s SDI program in the early 1980s would be a significant step away from the MAD model toward the goal of a winnable nuclear war. The word détente—“warming”—is often used to describe the improvements in Soviet-U.S. relations from
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the late 1960s to the early 1980s, a time when military parity between the two had all but been achieved. Both nations’ economies suffered—the United States from the expense of the Vietnam War, and the Soviets from that of catching up to the United States in the nuclear arms race. In order to encourage Soviet reforms, U.S. president Gerald Ford signed into law the Jackson-Vanik Amendment in 1975, which tied U.S.-Soviet trade relations to the conditions of Soviet human rights. The Soviets had lost their alliance with China because they had failed to strongly support China during border disputes with India and the invasion of Tibet. The prospect of facing a Chinese-U.S. alliance—however unlikely it may have seemed to Americans—discouraged the Soviets as much as MAD did, and contributed to their willingness to participate in summits such as those that resulted in the Outer Space Treaty, banning the presence of nuclear weapons in space. As they recovered from World War II, western Europe and Japan became more relevant again to the international scene, as did Communist China. Especially from the 1970s on, the U.S.-Soviet domination of international affairs eroded. The United States began to come under more frequent and serious criticism for the choices it had made in its opposition to communism, especially for its support of dictatorial or oppressive right-wing governments. Meanwhile, throughout the 1960s and 1970s, more and more developing nations adopted the policy of nonalignment. The Middle Eastern nations, their influence bolstered by oil and the increasing consumption thereof, became a particular factor, and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which increased oil prices in 1973 by 400 percent, was a leading player in the West’s economic troubles. As more countries joined the United Nations, the Western majority was broken. In 1979 the secular democratic regime of the shah in Iran—supported by the United States and restored in 1953 with the CIA’s help—fell to an alliance of liberal and religious rebels, who installed the religious leader the Ayatollah Khomeini as the new head of state. Outraged at the involvement of the United States in Iranian affairs, a group of Iranian students held 66 Americans hostage for 14 months, until 20 minutes after President Reagan’s inauguration. Détente ended as the 1980s began, with the Iran hostage crisis and the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Hard-line right-wingers had been elected in both the United Kingdom (Margaret Thatcher) and the United States (Reagan in 1981), and many neoconservatives characterized the détente of the previous decade as
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too permissive, and too soft on communism. Just as the United States had come under criticism for its support of certain governments, the Soviets lost a good deal of international respect not only over Afghanistan but also when they shot down a Korean commercial airliner (Korean Air Flight 007, in 1983) that passed into Soviet airspace. The first years of the 1980s saw an escalation in the arms race for the first time since the SALT talks began. The Strategic Defense Initiative, proposed by the Reagan administration in 1983, was a space- and ground-based antimissile defense system that would have completely abandoned the MAD model. Significant work went into it, seeking a winnable nuclear war, unthinkable in previous decades. mikhail gorbachev In 1985 the Soviet Politburo elected reformist Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of a generation who had grown up not under Stalin but under the more reform-minded Khrushchev. Gorbachev was savvy, sharp, and politically aware in a way many Soviet politicians were not. The keystones of his reforms were glasnost and perestroika, policies almost encapsulated by catchphrases widely repeated both in the Soviet Union and in Western newspapers. Glasnost, a policy instituted in 1985, simply meant “openness,” but referred not just to freedom of speech and the press but to making the mechanics of government visible and open to question by the public. Perestroika, which began in 1987, meant “restructuring.” Perestroika consisted of major economic reforms, significant shifts away from pure communism, allowing private ownership of businesses and much wider foreign trade. Two years after the start of perestroika, eastern European communism began to collapse under protests and uprisings, culminating in reformist revolutions in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, German Democratic Republic (East Germany), Hungary, Poland, and Romania. Several Soviet states sought independence from the Soviet Union, and Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania declared independence. The period culminated in the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. After years of public pressure, East Germany finally agreed to lift the restrictions on border traffic for those with proper visas. East Germany had little choice but to abandon the wall. They did nothing to stop the Mauerspechte (“wall chippers”) who arrived with sledgehammers to demolish the wall and claim souvenirs from it, and began the rehabilitation of the roads that the wall’s construction had destroyed. By the end of the year free travel was allowed throughout the city, without need
of visas or paperwork. A year later East and West Germany reunified. In 1991 radical communists in the Soviet Union seized power for three days in August, while Gorbachev was on vacation. Boris Yeltsin, the president of Russia, denounced the coup loudly and visibly—standing on a tank and addressing the public with a megaphone. The majority of the military quickly sided with him and the other opponents of the coup, which ended with little violence. But it was clear that the Soviet Union would not last—it was soon dissolved, becoming 15 independent states. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union the cold war was technically over, effective immediately, but a “cold war mentality” continued. The United States continued to involve itself in international affairs in similar ways, sometimes being accused of acting like a world policeman—a role the United Kingdom had enjoyed before the world wars. The apparatus of espionage found new subjects, with the ECHELON system of signals intelligence—monitoring telephone and electronic communication—eventually repurposed for the war on terror following the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Contrary to every expectation, the cold war ended without direct warfare and without the use of nuclear weapons. See also Eastern Bloc, collapse of the; Pinochet Ugarte, Augusto. Further reading: Bogle, Lori, ed. Cold War Espionage and Spying. New York: Routledge, 2001; Gaddis, John Lewis. The Cold War: A New History. New York: Penguin, 2005; Kort, Michael. The Columbia Guide to the Cold War. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998; Prados, John. Presidents’ Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon Covert Operations Since World War II. New York: Ivan R. Dee, 1996; Weinstein, Allen, and Alexander Vassiliev. The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America. Oxford: Oxford, 1999. Bill Kte’pi
Colombia, La Violencia in (1946–1966) Known simply as “The Violence” (La Violencia), the period of widespread political violence and civil war that wracked Colombia from the mid-1940s to the mid1960s (conventionally dated from 1946 to 1966, but also from 1948 to 1958, and 1948 to early 1970s) was rooted in conservative efforts to quell liberal challenges to continuing conservative political dominance, and liberal
resistance to the Conservative campaign of persecution and terror. Upwards of 200,000 people were killed from 1948 to 1958, the bloodiest years of The Violence, and perhaps 300,000 people from 1946 to 1966. The longer-term origins of La Violencia can be traced to Colombia’s long history of internecine political conflict, especially its “War of the Thousand Days” (1899–1902) between Liberals and Conservatives, the longest and bloodiest of Latin America’s 19th-century civil wars, in which some 100,000 people were killed, of a population of around 4 million. In the shorter term, La Violencia originated in rising Liberalpopulist challenges to oligarchic liberal-conservative rule spearheaded by liberal dissident Jorge Eliécer Gaitán from the 1930s, and especially from 1946. In that year’s presidential election, the Liberal Party split between the left-leaning populist reformer Gaitán and official candidate Alberto Lleras Camargo, permitting a plurality victory by conservative Mariano Ospina Pérez. In the context of rising popular support for a more open political system, democratic reforms, and more equitable sharing of the nation’s resources, the regime of Ospina Pérez stepped up the persecution of liberals and other moderate elements. Violence exploded after April 9, 1948, when Gaitán, widely considered the leading contender for the 1950 presidential elections, was assassinated in Bogotá. The city exploded in violence against property, with days of pillaging, burning, and political protesting across the length and breadth of the city, in what has come to be known as The Bogotazo (loosely, “the Bogotá Smash”). Liberal insurrections soon spread across much of the country, including provincial capitals and rural areas. Conservative elements responded by launching counterinsurgency actions, which by mid-1948 had crushed most overt resistance. Most Liberals withdrew from the government and refused to participate in the 1950 elections, which brought to power the ultraconservative Laureano Gómez (1950–53). Tensions ran high, as many Liberals continued organizing and mobilizing. With the support of most large landowners, the army and police, the church, conservative peasants, and the United States, the Gómez regime unleashed a reign of terror in city and countryside. The spiraling violence reached into almost every city, town, village, community, and family, with political partisanship at fever pitch and often accompanied by gruesome tortures and murders. Especially hard hit were Andean coffee-growing regions dominated by smallholding peasants—especially Boyacá, Antioquia, the Satanders, Valle del Cauca, and Cauca. Hit squads and assassins (pájaros, or “birds”)
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were paid handsomely for eliminating targeted enemies, protected by the authorities and dense networks of supporters. In response, guerrilla resistance armies emerged in many areas, often led by lower-class partisans. In 1953 the Gómez regime was ousted in a coup led by General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, who launched a pacification campaign based on amnesty and public works projects. By 1955 the pacification effort had largely failed, and the violence and atrocities continued. In 1958 a national plebiscite brought to power the National Front, a Liberal-Conservative powersharing arrangement that stemmed much of the violence, which continued to simmer in many areas, often in the form of rural banditry. By 1966, with the regime of Liberal Carlos Lleras Restrepo (1966–70), most violence had dissipated. Still, with the emergence of several left-wing guerrilla groups and right-wing paramilitary organizations, and in the context of the ballooning marijuana and cocaine trade and skyrocketing U.S. military aid in the “war on drugs,” Colombia remained one of Latin America’s most violent countries into the 21st century. Further reading: Bergquist, Charles, Ricardo Peñaranda, and Gonzalo Sánchez, eds. Violence in Colombia: The Contemporary Crisis in Historical Perspective. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1992; Roldan, Mary. Blood and Fire: La Violencia in Antioquia, Colombia, 1946–1953. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002. Michael J. Schroeder
Comecon The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) was established in January 1949 by the Soviet Union. It was an organization designed to economically unite all the communist states in the eastern bloc of Europe. The founding member nations were the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria. Albania joined in February 1949, the German Democratic Republic in 1950, Yugoslavia in 1956, and Mongolia in 1962. Several other communist states—such as China, North Korea, and North Vietnam—were official Comecon observers. Other countries gained membership or observer status in the Comecon. Council sessions were held regularly, and the leaders of member states usually met at least once each year. Economic policies for all member states were debated and determined at the
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council sessions. These policies were then implemented through Comecon directives. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Comecon was formally dissolved in June of that year. The initial charter of the organization stated three main goals to provide broader economic cooperation: “exchanging economic experience,” rendering “technical assistance,” and providing “mutual aid” to all member countries. The original goal of the Comecon was to establish stronger ties and greater cooperation between the command economies of the Soviet Union and the Eastern-bloc states. The Comecon provided Stalin with yet another way to strengthen his control over the eastern European allies by linking their economic vitality, production, and trade directly to the Soviet Union. The early years of the organization provided only modest results, such as bilateral trade agreements and sharing of technology between member states. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev attempted to strengthen the organization by proposing that all member states join a centrally planned socialist commonwealth to be run from Moscow. Smaller member states with lessdeveloped economies and those relying more heavily on agriculture disagreed with this plan for a centralized commonwealth. However, upon his ouster from power in 1964, his attempted centralization of the Comecon and most of his other policies were abandoned. Leonid Brezhnev and the Soviet leadership in the 1960s and 1970s recognized the need for economic acceleration and further industrial and technological development in the Soviet Union and Comecon member countries. The economic and technological gaps between countries in western Europe and those in the Comecon were becoming more evident. Therefore, the Comecon adopted a new plan in 1971 called the Comprehensive Programme for the Further Extension and Improvement of Cooperation and the Development of Socialist Economic Integration. The basic goal of this program was to emphasize long-term planning and investments in industrial development of all member states. The Comecon dissolved in 1991. Throughout its four decades of existence, the organization encountered many problems. The dependence of all member states on the economy of the Soviet Union created an unstable and impractical system. The planned economies of the member states did not rely on normal market forces and prices; therefore, the mechanism created a false and inflated economic situation. When the countries traded and dealt with other states outside of the Comecon, the
weakness of their economies became evident. The Comecon never completely fulfilled its objectives because of the difficulties presented when attempting to integrate multiple states’ economies. See also Soviet Union, dissolution, of the. Further reading: Brine, Jenny. COMECON: The Rise and Fall of an International Socialist Organization. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1992; Kaser, Michael. Comecon: Integration Problems of the Planned Economies. London: Oxford University Press, 1967; Metcalf, Lee Kendall. The Council of Mutual Economic Assistance: The Failure of Reform. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. Elizabeth C. Charles
Commonwealth of Nations The Commonwealth of Nations, formerly the British Commonwealth, is a loose cultural and political alliance of former British Empire territories. The idea of the commonwealth continually evolved after its origins in the mid- to late 19th century. The term referred to the settler colonies: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, Newfoundland, and South Africa. But in the 1920s the settler colonies and Britain began to meet in Imperial Conferences, which provided the structure for the later Commonwealth of Nations. The commonwealth shifted from a community of British-populated independent nations to a proposed economic bloc, and finally to a multicultural community of nations. The concept of commonwealth described the unique constitutional relationship between Great Britain and the settler colonies; Parliament and the Foreign Office presided over foreign affairs that involved the colonies, but the colonial parliaments controlled their own internal affairs. In the 1926 Imperial Conference, the Balfour Declaration acknowledged that Britain and the settler dominions were “equal in status” to Britain. After the Statute of Westminster in 1931—which gave the dominions of Canada, Newfoundland, South Africa, and Ireland legislative independence—the commonwealth officially became a political organization consisting of the United Kingdom along with its former colonies. The British tried to make the commonwealth work as a large trading bloc, with trade preferences between the former colonies as well as the formal colonies. Britain’s imports and exports to and from the colonies never amounted to more than a third of Britain’s trade. Also, such countries as Australia, New Zealand, and
Canada became more dependent upon the United States for trade, especially after World War II. The sudden decolonization of the British colonies in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s created the foundations for the current commonwealth. India’s decision to stay in the commonwealth in 1949 provided a precedence for later nonsettler colonies to join the commonwealth after independence. In order to keep its political sovereignty while still allowing for cultural ties, India accepted the king of England as the symbolic head of the commonwealth. In 1949, when India accepted the king as the symbolic head of the commonwealth, the British Commonwealth of Nations changed its name to the Commonwealth of Nations, so as not to imply that its peoples were all of British ethnicity. As a number of newly independent countries applied to join the commonwealth after they gained independence, the composition of the commonwealth shifted from a meeting of predominantly white countries to a multicultural organization. At the Heads of Governments Conferences in Singapore in 1971 and in Ottawa in 1973, the general consensus was that the commonwealth should be a loose political association of the former British Empire. The Commonwealth of Nations continued to uphold these principals into the 21st century. As of 2006 Queen Elizabeth II, the queen of England, held the title head of commonwealth. The commonwealth heads of government decide who will be the next commonwealth secretary-general, the official who leads the Commonwealth Secretariat, the decisionmaking body of the Commonwealth of Nations. Every five years the heads of government elect a new secretarygeneral at the Commonwealth Secretariat meeting. Members as of 2006 included Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, the Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belize, Botswana, Brunei Darussalam, Cameroon, Canada, Cyprus, Dominica, Fiji, Gambia, Ghana, Grenada, Guyana, India, Jamaica, Kenya, Kiribati, Lesotho, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Malta, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nauru, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Tanzania, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, Uganda, United Kingdom, Trinidad and Tobago, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Further reading: Louis, Wm. Roger. Oxford History of the British Empire, Vol. 5: The Twentieth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001; Mansergh, Nicholas. The
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Commonwealth Experience: From British to Multiracial Commonwealth. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988; Moore, Robin. Making the New Commonwealth. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988; Porter, Bernard. The Lion’s Share: A Short History of the British Empire 1850–1995. 3d London: Longmans Press, 1996. Brett Bennett
contra war (Nicaragua, 1980s) Within a year of the July 1979 triumph of the Nicaraguan revolution, there emerged a counterrevolutionary (contra) movement against the Sandinista regime. From around 1982 the war expanded to include large parts of the country, especially in rural zones of the north and east, due in large part to U.S. funding, training, equipment, and organizing under the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Combining an internal civil war with an external war of aggression, the contra war was waged by several counterrevolutionary armies that were responsible for the deaths of thousands of Nicaraguans and millions of dollars of property damage. By the mid-1980s the war compelled the Sandinista regime to devote around half of the national budget to national defense and to institute universal military conscription. By the late 1980s the latter measure proved widely unpopular among Nicaraguans, as did the economic and human cost of the conflict and the shortages of basic goods caused by the war and the May 1985 U.S. trade embargo. Most observers agree that the contra war was a critical factor in causing the electoral defeat of the Sandinistas in February 1990, effectively ending the Sandinista revolution. It was also central to the Iran-contra affair in the United States, which rocked the second Reagan administration (1984–88). With the electoral defeat of the Sandinistas and an internationally supervised demobilization process, by the early 1990s the war effectively ended, though armed groups continued to destabilize many rural areas well into the 1990s. It is estimated that the war uprooted some 600,000 people (around 15 percent of the national population) and caused the deaths of 30,000 to 50,000 civilians and combatants. Small-scale armed resistance to the Sandinista regime by autonomously organized militias began within a month of the FSLN’s takeover, principally in the region north of Jinotega. These earliest contras, calling themselves milpistas (combatants of the MILPAS, or Militias Populares Anti-Sandinistas, successor
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rganizations to the pro-Sandinista Militias Populares o Anti-Somocistas, and a play on an indigenous word for “cornfield”), launched their first armed assault against the Sandinistas in November 1979 in the mountains near Quilalí. The MILPAS were generally kinshipbased, composed of fewer than 100 members each and rooted in rural dwellers’ long tradition of antipathy to state authority. During this early period (1979–81), contra organizing also emerged in the borderland zones of Honduras and Costa Rica among exiled Somocistas and National Guardsmen. Like the MILPAS, these paramilitary groups were small in scale and organized principally around personal relationships. By late 1980 some of these exile groups began to receive covert funding from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Argentine military. In April 1981 elements of the MILPAS and ex-Guardia—dominated exile groups in Honduras formed the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (Fuerza Democratica Nicaragüense, or FDN), under the command of exGuardia colonel Enrique Bermúdez, composed of some 500 troops. Portraying the Sandinistas as clients of the Cubans and Soviets, in November 1981 Reagan signed a secret order (National Security Decision Directive 17) granting $19 million to the CIA to recruit and train contra forces. On December 1, 1981, he issued a presidential finding calling for U.S. support in conducting paramilitary operations against the Sandinista regime. Around this time a second contra army was formed in the north, the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARN), under the political direction of the Nicaraguan Democratic Union (UDN), and led by exiled businessman José Francisco Cardenal. Henceforth the contra war rapidly gained steam. In April 1982 a second front was opened in the south with the formation of the Democratic Revolutionary Alliance (ARDE) and its military wing, the Sandino Revolutionary Front (FRS), based in Costa Rica and commanded by former Sandinista Edén Pastora. Another largely autonomous armed rebel group formed in the Atlantic Coast region in late 1981, led by Brooklyn Rivera, among disaffected elements of the mass indigenous organization MISURASATA—an organization composed primarily of Miskitu Amerindians and represented in the FSLN’s newly created Council of State. In the United States, congressional opposition to the Reagan administration’s funding of the contra forces mounted. In December 1982 the House passed an amendment sponsored by Edward Boland (D., Mass.) banning the use of federal funds to overthrow the Nica-
raguan government. The Reagan administration found legal ways to circumvent the ban. By 1983 the contra forces had grown to some 13,000 to 15,000 troops, and by 1985 to some 20,000. By this time the contras had committed hundreds of atrocities against Nicaraguan civilians, as documented by the human rights organization Americas Watch and others. In May 1984 Congress passed a second Boland amendment, requiring an end to all military aid to the contras by October 1. For the next two years, the Reagan administration illegally funneled covert aid to Iran in exchange for Iranian arms shipments to the contras. By the late 1980s contra armies were active across much of the northern and central parts of the country. In 1988 and 1989 a series of peace accords (notably the Sapoá Accord of 1988) created a framework for contra demobilization. With the Sandinista defeat in the February 1990 elections, the administration of President Violeta Chamorro negotiated with the leaders of the Nicaraguan Resistance (Resistencia Nicaragüense, or RN, successor to the FDN), culminating in the Disarmament Protocol of May 30, 1990. Agencies of the United Nations and Organization of American States supervised the disarmament process, which by mid1990 had processed some 23,000 contras, from an estimated fighting force of 170,000, many of whom demobilized informally. Through the early 1990s armed groups continued to destabilize large parts of the interior, consisting of both ex-contras (recontras) and former members of the Sandinista Army (recompas)—groups that sometimes merged to form groups of revueltos (a play on words meaning both “rebels” and “scrambled eggs”). By 1992, with the contra war officially ended, as many as 23,000 armed insurgents continued to operate in rural areas, posing severe challenges to governance in the second-poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. See also Sandinista National Liberation Front. Further reading: Brody, Reed. Contra Terror in Nicaragua: Report of a Fact-Finding Mission: September 1984– January 1985. Boston: South End Press, 1985; Brown, Timothy C. The Real Contra War: Highlander Peasant Resistance in Nicaragua. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001; Dickey, Christopher. With the Contras: A Reporter in the Wilds of Nicaragua. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985, 1987; Horton, Lynn. Peasants in Arms: War and Peace in the Mountains of Nicaragua, 1979–1994. Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1998. Michael J. Schroeder
counterculture in the United States and Europe Counterculture is a sociological term that describes the radical values and models of a group of people clashing with those of the majority, or cultural mainstream. The term entered common usage during the 1960s and 1970s when movements of youth rebellion against conservative social standards swept the United States and western Europe. The countercultural movement represented a reaction against the conformist values embodied by 1950s society, the repressive principles of the cold war, and the U.S. intervention in Vietnam. Young people throughout the world advocated peace and fairer race relations. They challenged conventional gender and sexual role—ideas spawned by the revival of feminism—and pushed legal boundaries to the limit by the recreational use of drugs such as marijuana and LSD. The political and social aspects of counterculture are inseparable from the unconventional postures and appearances of its members. The 1960s counterculture originated on U.S. college campuses and later arrived in European universities. The University of California at Berkeley was a particularly important center, and its 1964 free speech movement became one of the first occasions of tension between youth and the authorities. To scholars of counterculture, the free speech movement was the point of departure for the protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s. The movement demanded that campus administrators suspend the ban on university political activities and recognize the students’ right to free speech and academic freedom. On October 1, 1964, former student Jack Weinberg refused to leave the table where he was campaigning for the civil rights association Congress for Racial Equality (CORE). His arrest by the police led to a spontaneous demonstration by fellow students, who blocked the police car containing Weinberg for 36 hours. The following month the university decided to bring charges against those who organized the sit-in. This led to imposing demonstrations and the arrest in early December of 800 students in front of Sproul Hall, the university’s administrative center. After more protest parades the University of California started reconsidering its rules on political activities on campus, permitting tables and discussions on the steps of Sproul Hall at certain times of the day. The decade continued in the United States with the outbreak of more tensions, often along generational lines, concerning the Vietnam War, sexual behavior, the
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role of women in society, African-American civil rights, and drug experimentation. Vietnam became a specific target of criticism, which was also heightened by the imposition of a compulsory military draft. A veritable revolution took place in sexual mores with the spread of contraception and the legalization of abortion in 1973 with the Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade. The Summer of Love drew thousands of people from around the world to San Francisco in 1967, particularly to the Haight-Ashbury district. The end of the 1960s also witnessed the organization of gays and lesbians in groups to acquire visibility and to have their identities recognized. Drug taking stopped being a social phenomena linked to urban ghettos and became part of middle-class life. Feminist thinkers asked for comprehensive social change, pointing out that economic structures are at the base of women’s subordination. The United States shifted from the family-oriented society of the 1950s to one that had individual rights at its core. It was in the 1960s that women started to challenge the cultural expectation that they would take primary responsibility for child rearing. Most feminists demanded the alleviation of the social burdens of motherhood through paternal involvement in parenting, quality child care, flexible work arrangements, and a system of social and financial welfare that did not leave them to rely completely on their husbands. At the beginning of the 1960s few Americans were aware of the struggle of African Americans for civil rights. The Supreme Court ruling Brown v. Board of Education outlawing segregation in public schools dates back to 1954, but progress in the implementation of integration had been slow. The 1960s witnessed renewed activism of young African Americans, who refused to leave lunch counters when they were denied service or to travel on segregated buses. In 1962 the admission of African American James Meredith to the state university in Mississippi caused a sensation and an outburst of violence from white supremacists. Martin Luther King, Jr., became the leader of the Civil Rights movement, and in August 1963 he managed to draw together hundreds of thousands of African Americans and white Americans in his March on Washington to call attention to the fact that a century after emancipation many African Americans were still unable to exercise basic citizens’ rights. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were important achievements of the Civil Rights movement. The acts outlawed segregation in public facilities and authorized federal examiners to register black voters, thus ending disenfranchisement.
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The counterculture soon arrived in European capitals, with devastating effects for the established power. As in the United States, the young people taking part in the countercultural movements were well educated, often at the university level. As riots became widespread throughout European streets, this provoked heated debates within the left. Who were the true proletarians? The students or the policemen who had to battle with them in the streets? Left-wing groups independent from the communist and socialist parties were formed in Italy, France, and Germany. These groups—such as Potere Operaio and Lotta Continua in Italy—did not have parliamentary representation, but still became the avant-garde of the movement because of their capacity to attract young people. cultural forms During the 1960s and 1970s new cultural forms emerged in all artistic fields from cinema to music, from fashion to media. The music of the Beatles came to embody the need for change and the experimentation of younger generations. The Old Hollywood of dated melodramas controlled by studio moguls was replaced by the New Hollywood. Young directors such as Dennis Hopper, Peter Bogdanovich, Mike Nichols, Arthur Penn, Francis Ford Coppola, and Martin Scor sese reflected in their movies the rise of the counterculture and expressed the longing for freedom shared by thousands of young Americans. In Europe the French and British New Waves and the New German Cinema rejected the classic norms of filmmaking, experimenting with photography and editing. They also focused their films on the ordinary lives of the working classes and on those outside of the social mainstream. Underground newspapers spread throughout the United States and Europe, constituting a network of resistance to the establishment. One of the most visible icons of the counterculture movements was the figure of the hippie, who often expressed the distaste for social conventions by renouncing consumerism and living in communes guided by forms of spiritualism outside the Christian tradition. The figure of the hippie encapsulates a major contradiction in the countercultural movement. The communal thrust of the movement is countered by an equally strong emphasis on individual choices, which tends to prevent any form of cooperation. The more fascinating and controversial aspects of the counterculture should not overshadow the contributions of the movement outside the arts. The counterculture influence reached less spectacular and more
stable fields such as economics, business, and law. Many of today’s nongovernmental organizations, for example, have their roots in the 1960s search for a fairer and more environmentally minded development. In general, as the counterculture evolved in the 1970s and its icons began to lead more moderate lives, the movement started to be absorbed to a certain degree within the mainstream. As such it left its mark on various fields like philosophy, morality, music, art, lifestyle, and fashion. Yet, especially in the European context, there were those who refused to be absorbed, and pushed their refusal to dangerous extremes. The late 1970s and the 1980s were characterized by the rise of terrorist groups such as the Red Brigades in Italy, Action Directe in France, and the Red Army in Germany. The most apparent features of the 1960s and 1970s counterculture were unconventional appearance, music, drugs, communitarian experiments, and sexual liberation—mostly practiced by white, middle-class young Americans and Europeans. To some the counterculture represented the longing of young people for free speech, equality, and a more inclusive and less exploitative world. Others denounced the counterculture as hedonistic, meaninglessly rebellious, unpatriotic, and destructive of the Western world’s moral order. See also appropriate technology; Beat movement. Further reading: Bailey, Beth, and David Farber. America in the Seventies. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2004; Farber, David, and Beth Bailey. The Columbia Guide to America in the 1960s. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003; Feenberg, Andrew. When Poetry Ruled the Streets: The French May Events of 1968. New York: State University of New York Press, 2001; Kurlansky, Mark. 1968: The Year that Rocked the World. New York: Ballantine Books, 2003; Swingrover, E. A., ed. The Counterculture Reader. New York: Longman, 2003. Luca Prono
Cuban migration to the United States Movements of people from Cuba to the United States comprise a longstanding feature of both countries’ histories. The panic of 1857 prompted numerous Cuban cigar manufacturers to move their operations to Key West, Tampa, and elsewhere along the Florida coast. During and after the Ten Years’ War (1868–78), several thousand Cubans formed exile communities along the
U.S. eastern seaboard—especially in Key West, Tampa, Ocala, and Jacksonville, Florida, and further north in New York City. The 1850 U.S. census shows 969 persons of Cuban birth living in the United States, with most (275) in Louisiana and 23 in Florida. By 1860 there were 2,056, with 55 in Florida. That number more than tripled by 1870, reaching 6,515, with about half (3,014) in New York and less than a fifth (1,147) in Florida. By 1880 the figure rose slightly to 7,004, with Florida (2,625) surpassing New York (2,253), followed by Louisiana (652) and Pennsylvania (359, with 309 in Philadelphia). In 1900, in the aftermath of the Cuban War of Independence and the U.S. military intervention and occupation of the island, 11,243 Cuban-born persons were listed, including 6,645 in Florida (3,378 in Tampa, 3,015 in Key West) and 2,251 in New York. In 1910 the number rose to 15,725, remaining stagnant to 1920 (15,822). All of the above figures likely undercounted the actual number. A much larger movement of Cubans to the United States began with the Cuban revolution, which came to power in January 1959. From 1960 to 1962 an estimated 195,000 Cubans immigrated to the United States, mostly professionals and members of the middle class, with most settling in Miami, Florida; Union City, New Jersey; and New York City. The exodus continued in several waves through the 1960s and into the 1970s, becoming integral to cold war politics, welcomed by the U.S. government and materially harming the Cuban economy, even as the exoduses proved politically useful to the Castro regime. The 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act (CAA) allowed undocumented Cuban immigrants to stay in the country and gain permanent residence after one year, rights not extended to any other immigrant group. In 1980 some 125,000 Cubans, the so-called Marielitos, emigrated to the United States in the Mariel boatlift. In the summer of 1994 at Castro’s invitation, an estimated 33,000 Cubans made the journey. The exodus prompted the U.S. government to negotiate an agreement with Cuba, in September 1994, in which the United States agreed to admit a minimum of 20,000 Cubans annually, and emigrants intercepted at sea would no longer be permitted to enter the United States. In 1995 the 1966 CAA was revised to incorporate the so-called wet-foot, dry-foot policy, which stipulated that undocumented Cuban immigrants who reached U.S. soil (“dry feet”) would be permitted to apply for permanent residence status in one year, while those intercepted at sea (“wet feet”) would be sent back to Cuba or to a third country.
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The 2000 U.S. census enumerated 1,241,685 persons of Cuban ancestry in the United States, comprising 3.5 percent of U.S. Hispanics and 0.4 percent of the U.S. population of 281.4 million. Most lived in Miami– Dade County, Florida, with 525,841 Cuban-born, the single largest national group among large influxes of Haitians, Dominicans, Central Americans, and others from the 1980s especially. As a result of these demographic changes, the politics and culture of south Florida have undergone profound shifts, with relatively affluent, politically conservative, and vehemently anti-Castro Cuban Americans increasingly shaping the region’s economy, politics, and culture. See also Bay of Pigs; Castro, Fidel. Further reading: Masud-Piloto, Félix Roberto. With Open Arms: Cuban Migration to the United States. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1988; Miami–Dade County, Planning Research Section, “Demographic Profile, Miami-Dade County, Florida, 1960–2000,” September 2003, http://www. miamidade.gov/planzone/Library/Census/demographic_profile.pdf (accessed February 7, 2007). Michael J. Schroeder
Cuban missile crisis (October 1962) In what many experts consider the closest the world has yet come to nuclear war, for 13 days in October 1962 the United States and the Soviet Union faced off over the Soviet placement of nuclear missiles in Cuba. In the end, the Soviet Union backed down, agreed to remove the missiles in exchange for the removal of U.S. nuclear missiles in Turkey, and the crisis passed. The Cuban missile crisis left an enduring mark on U.S.Soviet relations, heightened U.S. resolve in other cold war conflicts, and appeared to demonstrate the viability of the doctrine of nuclear deterrence through mutually assured destruction. The long-term roots of the crisis lie in the atmosphere of mutual hostility and distrust engendered by the cold war. In the shorter term, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev hoped to use the provocation to force the United States to remove the 15 Jupiter nuclear missiles in Turkey, which were within striking distance of Moscow. In addition, the botched April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba heightened revolutionary leader Fidel Castro’s fears of a follow-up U.S. effort to topple his regime. The Bay of Pigs events also persuaded Khrushchev that U.S. president John F. Kennedy
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Cuban missile crisis (October 1962)
An aerial view showing the medium-range ballistic missile field launch site at San Cristóbal, Cuba, on October 25, 1962. The presence of these weapons led the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of war.
was weak and indecisive and would back down when confronted with the reality of Soviet missiles in Cuba. Declassified documents and a series of conferences among participants from the United States, Cuba, and the former Soviet Union have confirmed that the events of October 1962 brought the world closer to the brink of nuclear holocaust than officials at the time realized. Scholars have meticulously reconstructed the chronology of events marking the crisis. Through the summer of 1962 the Soviets built a variety of military installations on Cuba, as confirmed by aerial reconnaissance, though U.S. intelligence analysts did not believe they included nuclear weapons. On October 14, 1962, a U-2 spy plane photographed military bases around San Cristóbal, Cuba, demonstrating the existence of nuclear installations. Khrushchev, with Castro’s approval, had deployed launchers for at least
40 medium-range and intermediate-range nuclear missiles, capable of reaching all of the continental United States except the Pacific Northwest. For the next two days, U.S. analysts poured over the photographs. Kennedy and his national security team were briefed on their findings on the morning of October 16, the beginning of the “thirteen days.” His team devised two plans: an invasion of the island, and a naval blockade—the latter, by international law, an act of war. Kennedy opted for the blockade, announced in a televised address to the nation on October 22. The next six days were the height of the crisis. On October 28, one day before the U.S. deadline for launching an invasion of Cuba, Khrushchev agreed to remove the launchers in exchange for the U.S. removal of its missiles from Turkey. Many scholars argue that the outcome of the crisis prompted a more muscular U.S.
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response to perceived Communist aggression around the world, and contributed to deepened U.S. intervention in Vietnam. See also cold war. Further reading: Chang, Lawrence, and Peter Kornbluh, eds. The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962: A National Security Archive Documents Reader. New York: The New Press, 1999; Nathan, James. Anatomy of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001. Michael J. Schroeder
Cuban revolution (1959– ) On January 1, 1959, a broad-based insurrectionary movement—with Fidel Castro at its helm—overthrew the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and inaugurated the Cuban revolution, a process of social transformation that continues to the present writing. Its ideology was at first broadly nationalist and democratic, but by 1961 the revolution was proclaimed unambiguously socialist and Marxist-Leninist. One of only a handful of social revolutions in 20th-century Latin America, the Cuban revolution had a major impact not only within Cuba but around the world. In Latin America, the revolution encouraged the formation of leftist and neo-Marxist ideologies and movements of national liberation, sparking a florescence of guerrilla groups in the 1960s and after that hoped to duplicate the successes of the Cuban revolutionaries. The Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua (1979–90), for instance, found much of its inspiration in the events in Cuba, as did other national liberation and guerrilla movements from Mexico to Argentina. By bringing a Marxist-Leninist regime to the historic “backyard” of the United States, the Cuban revolution was also a major event in the cold war. Its effects were felt in Angola, Mozambique, Vietnam, and scores of other nation-states around the world, particularly in the two decades following Batista’s ouster. The revolution found its long-term origins in the structural dependency of Cuba on the United States since the thwarting of Cuban independence in 1898 and the U.S.-imposed Platt Amendment of 1901, which prompted denunciations of “Yankee imperialism” across the island; and in the poverty, economic inequalities, and political disfranchisement of the Cuban people under a series of dictatorial regimes. Most narratives of the revolution begin with the
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rise of the Jesuit- and university-educated lawyer Fidel Castro and his band of revolutionaries. On July 26, 1953, Castro—at the head of a group of 134 men— attacked the Moncada barracks in Oriente province in eastern Cuba. The assault was quickly defeated but catapulted Castro into national prominence. At his trial in October 1953, he delivered a brilliant speech, later turned into a pamphlet and becoming one of the defining texts of the revolution, whose title repeated its closing words: “History will absolve me.” Sentenced to 15 years in prison, Castro became something of a folk hero for his eloquent denunciations of the Batista dictatorship and the island’s social injustices. Released on May 15, 1955, in a general amnesty, Castro traveled to Mexico to form a guerrilla army of Cuban exiles. In February 1956 he announced the formation of his 26 July Movement, and on November 25, with 81 other men, departed Tuxpan, Mexico, aboard the yacht Granma, headed for eastern Cuba, which they reached on December 2. The guerrilla war in the Sierra Maestra in 1957–58 is the topic of an expansive literature. Led by Castro, his brother Raúl, and the Argentine Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the rebels gradually earned the trust of the peasants and workers who comprised the region’s majority. It also established contacts with politically disaffected labor leaders, workers, students, intellectuals, and other activists in Cuba’s major cities, especially Havana, whose protest movements soon dovetailed with Castro’s. After a complex series of events that found the Batista regime increasingly beleaguered, Castro’s forces entered Havana in triumph on January 1, 1959. On seizing power, the revolutionaries embarked on a program of social transformation that focused on nationalization of major industries and broadranging reforms in land ownership, housing, rents, food, and related spheres. Since a large proportion of Cuban land and industries were U.S.-owned, the stage was set for confrontation with the United States. Hostile rhetoric intensified on both sides as the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower, under pressure from business interests and anticommunists, interpreted events in Cuba through the prism of the cold war. In February 1960 the Castro regime signed a trade agreement with the Soviet Union in which the Soviets agreed to sell Cuba oil at a discount and buy Cuban sugar at a high price. In June Standard Oil, Texaco, and Shell refused to refine Soviet oil, prompting the Castro regime to nationalize their refineries. In retaliation the Eisenhower administration cancelled its commitment to buy its annual sugar quota of 700,000 tons, which the
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Soviets quickly assumed. What had begun as a national liberation movement quickly escalated into a cold war battleground, with the Castro regime, in effect, trading U.S. economic dependency for Soviet dependency. On December 2, 1961, following the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and U.S. trade embargo of April, Castro proclaimed: “I am a Marxist-Leninist and will remain a Marxist-Leninist until the day I die.” Early efforts to diversify the economy largely failed, plagued by bureaucratic micromanagement and overplanning, and over-reliance on the concept of the socialist “New Man,” in which economic incentives were to be displaced by revolutionary fervor. From 1964 the regime opted to increase the economy’s reliance on sugar, culminating in the disastrous policy goal of producing 10 million tons of sugar by 1970. The effort failed and had negative economic effects for years. Efforts to improve the living standards of ordinary Cubans met with greater success. Government programs in housing, health care, education, and related spheres are generally considered the biggest successes of the revolution. By the 1970s hunger, malnutrition, homelessness, and illiteracy had been all but eliminated, while the Cuban health-care system ranked among the most developed in the world. On the negative side of the ledger, political oppression increased markedly, with all organized opposition to the regime banned, thousands of dissidents jailed, and freedom of speech severely curtailed. Beginning in 1960 and continuing in several waves thereafter, the regime’s intolerance of political dissent and socialist economic policies prompted tens of thousands of middle-class and professional Cubans to migrate to the United States, where large exile communities formed, centered in Miami. Internationally, Cuba became a beacon of hope for revolutionaries across Latin America. To the chagrin of his more cautious Soviet patrons, Castro announced his intention to export revolution to Latin America. The plan’s most ardent proponent was former minister of industries Che Guevara, whose “foco” theory of revolution, which held that a small group of dedicated revolutionaries could win peasant support and spark a social revolution, was put to the test in Bolivia in 1967. The expected mass uprising did not materialize, and Guevara was captured and killed by the Bolivian army. Castro remained the head of the Cuban Communist Party through the 1970s and 1980s, as the bureaucracy expanded and the revolution grew increasingly institutionalized. With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the end of its approximately $4 billion in annual subsidies, combined with the continuing U.S. trade embargo,
the revolution entered a “Special Period” that saw a decline in living standards and in all major industries. In the early 2000s, Cuba was one of only a handful of countries worldwide explicitly espousing communist ideology. In early 2007, with over 1 million Cubans and Cuban Americans in Miami and elsewhere anticipating the regime’s demise, Castro appeared on the brink of death, with speculation rife on whether the revolution could survive without him. He resigned the presidency in favor of his brother, Raoul, in February 2008. Further reading: Bonachea, Ramón L., and Marta San Martín. The Cuban Insurrection, 1952–1959. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1974; Leonard, Thomas M. Castro and the Cuban Revolution. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999; Thomas, Hugh. Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom. New York: Harper & Row, 1971; Wolf, Eric R. Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century. New York: Harper & Row, 1969. Michael J. Schroeder
Cyprus, independence of On June 4, 1878, Britain concluded a treaty with the Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid II, officially known as a Convention of Defensive Alliance. In this treaty Abdul Hamid agreed to the loan of Cyprus to Britain, while retaining Ottoman sovereignty over the island and the right to collect a tax known as the tribute. Britain won de facto control of the island and the right to make laws and international agreements in the name of Cyprus. Within weeks of the signing of this treaty, the Union Jack flag was hoisted over Nicosia, and shortly afterward a contingent of Indian army troops arrived from Malta to safeguard British colonial rule, which lasted 82 years. For Britain, Cyprus became a vital staging area for its Middle East interests. The island was formally taken over by the British in 1914, when the Ottoman Empire aligned itself with Germany and the other Central Powers during World War I. Under the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923, Turkey and Greece agreed that Cyprus would remain under British sovereignty, and in 1925 Cyprus was declared a crown colony. Both the Greeks and the Turks of Cyprus considered British control a welcome relief from Turkish taxation; many Greek Cypriots also felt that the departure of the Ottoman administration brought the island closer to the Greek dream of enosis, or union, with Greece. Thus, in effect, began the efforts of the Greek Cypriots to link the island’s destiny with that of Greece. The British govern-
ment continued to state formally that no change in the status of the island was contemplated. Such an attitude further embittered the Greek Cypriots, although it was of some comfort to the Turkish Cypriots. On April 1, 1955, a secret organization calling itself the National Organization of Cypriot Fighters—known by its Greek initials as EOKA (Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston)—declared a struggle until death to free the island from British rule and to link it with the Greek mainland. The war for the future of Cyprus began as colonial empires were crumbling around the globe. The British felt there was no question of a union with Greece or of full independence for Cyprus. Considering its commitments in the Middle East and its still important role on the southeastern flank of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Britain regarded Cyprus as a crucial military base on the traditional crossroads of big-power competition for influence in the eastern Mediterranean. Turkish Cypriot reactions were predictable. The Turks felt that, if successful, the Greek struggle for enosis against British colonial rule meant that the Turkishspeaking minority on the island would lose the protection of the British. Fear of a Greek victory prompted the creation of a Turkish Cypriot counter organization known as VULCAN; the Turkish Cypriot minority also cooperated with the British police and military in tracking down suspected EOKA fighters. To the slogan of enosis, Turkish Cypriots answered with their own solution, that of takism, or partition, of Cyprus. Georgios Grivas, who had previously served as a colonel in the Greek army, led the EOKA. Grivas arrived on the island from Greece in 1954 and set out to prepare what amounted to an well-organized uprising. In Nicosia, early in 1955, rumors of landings of saboteurs, of infiltration by agents dispatched from Greece, and of organized resistance began sweeping the narrow streets, and soon Cyprus became an armed camp. An estimated 28,000 British troops were deployed throughout the island, manning roadblocks, searching passersby, pursuing elusive terrorist suspects, and uncovering arms caches and hideouts in some of the most improbable places. Cyprus had become a dangerous weak spot in the NATO alliance. What needed to be done was to work out a system of ethnic power-sharing that would satisfy Greece and Turkey, as both nations worked to protect their Cypriot ethnic compatriots as well as their own interests. Talks between the two countries continued throughout January 1959. On February 5, Greek prime minister Constantine Karamanlis and Adnan Menderes of Turkey met
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in Zurich, where they prepared, after negotiations and consultation with the leaders of the two Cypriot communities, an outline for a solution to the Cyprus situation. With that document in hand, they traveled to London, where they were joined by Archbishop Mikhalis Khristodoulou Makarios III and Dr. Fazil Kuchuk, the political leader of the Turkish Cypriot community. The new Cypriot constitution, based on the Zurich-London agreements, was issued in April 1960 and paved the way for the proclamation of the independent Republic of Cyprus. The president of the republic was a Greek Cypriot while the vice president was a Turkish Cypriot, both being elected by their representative communities. Both had veto powers over foreign affairs, defense, fiscal matters, and security. three treaties On the same day the constitution was finalized it was accompanied by three treaties: the Treaty of Guarantee, the Treaty of Alliance, and the Treaty of Establishment. The Treaty of Guarantee was signed by Turkey, Britain, Greece, and Cyprus. It stated that the four countries agreed not to undertake activity aimed at promoting, directly or indirectly, a union of Cyprus with any other state, or a partition of the island. The Treaty of Alliance involved Cyprus, Greece, and Turkey. It established a tripartite headquarter on the island and permitted the two latter states to deploy, respectively, 950 and 650 persons in Cyprus to protect the island. The Treaty of Establishment was signed between Britain and Cyprus and granted Britain sovereignty over a territory on the island’s southern coast for two military bases, Akrotiri and Dhekelia. The constitutional agreement was reached at the price of some 500 killed during the EOKA struggle with the British, but it also allowed Britain’s colonial disengagement from Cyprus. The flag under which the two communities of Cyprus were to unite was displayed to the public on August 16, 1960. The Union Jack was replaced with a white flag bearing an orange map of Cyprus with small green branches underneath. See also: Cyprus, Turkish invasion of. Further reading: Cyprus, A Country Study. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1993; Halley, Laurence. Ancient Affections: Ethnic Groups and Foreign Policy. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1985. Brian M. Eichstadt
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Cyprus, Turkish invasion of On July 19, 1974, Turkish warships and landing craft moved toward the northern coast of Cyprus. The invasion—or intervention, to the Turks—was Turkey’s answer to the military coup of 15 July that toppled Archbishop Mikhalis Khristodoulou Makarios III, president of Cyprus, at the behest of the military junta in power in Athens, Greece. Turkish officials justified the military action by citing the terms of Article IV of the Treaty of Guarantee, noting the impossibility of joint action with Greece and the reluctance of Britain to use military force to restore the state of affairs established by the constitution of 1960. The Turkish military offensive began on July 20, and although the Greek National Guard tried to defend the beachfront of northern Cyprus, it was defeated by the far stronger Turkish armed forces. The Greek National Guard was poorly armed, while the Turks used new equipment and weapons recently purchased from the United States. Britain evacuated an estimated 12,000 British and other foreign nationals, as well as a number of Cypriots, to the Akrotiri military base and from there to England. By July 22, the United Nations succeeded in obtaining a cease-fire. At this stage of the operation, named Attila II, the Turks controlled only a strip of the northern coastline about 10 miles long, including Kyrenia and a few villages. Under pressure of the events in Cyprus, the Athens junta finally collapsed after more than seven years in power. Former Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis returned from exile in Paris to form a new cabinet. At the same time, Nicos Sampson renounced his seven-dayold presidency of Cyprus, leaving the shattered country to Glafcos Clerides, who had previously been the president of the House of Representatives. During the early days of the post-invasion period, the Greek National Guard attacked Turkish Cypriots, thereby worsening intercommunal relations. A conference of the guarantor powers (Greece, Turkey, and Britain), as well as Cyprus, was organized in Geneva on July 25 and resulted in a declaration calling for an exchange of prisoners and protection by the UN
forces of the Turkish Cypriot enclaves. As scheduled, the second part of the conference convened on August 9 with Clerides and a large team of advisers and experts representing Cyprus. Meanwhile, the small area of Cyprus held by the Turkish army was further occupied by some 30,000 troops with accompanying tanks, and artillery. On August 13 the Turkish foreign minister Turan Günes¸ shocked international opinion by refusing a request for a 36-to-48-hour delay made by Clerides in order to consider proposals to resolve the crisis. At dawn on the following day, armor-backed Turkish columns fanned out east and west of Nicosia. By this action Turkey was in violation of the many Security Council resolutions calling for a cease-fire and troop withdrawal, as well as agreements that were signed in Geneva. After three more days of fighting, Turkey called a cease-fire, but not before 37 percent of Cyprus had come under Turkish military occupation. Approximately 10,000 Turkish Cypriot refugees from enclaves in the south were flown to northern Cyprus from British bases by way of Turkey. Some 140,000 to 160,000 Greek Cypriots, making up roughly one-third of the island’s population, were expelled from their homes and land. Acts of ethnic cleansing by the Turkish military were documented, and many POWs are still unaccounted for. The events of 1974 dramatically altered the internal balance of power between the two Cypriot communities and coupled their prevailing political and institutional separation with a stark physical and geographical separation. Until the present day, the island remains divided between the Greek-speaking south, now a member of the EU, and the self-styled Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which is recognized only by Turkey. See also Cyprus, independence of. Further reading: Cyprus, A Country Study. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1993; Halley, Laurence. Ancient Affections: Ethnic Groups and Foreign Policy. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1985. Brian M. Eichstadt
D Dalai Lama, 14th (Tenzin Gyatso) (1935– ) Tibetan Buddhist leader
The Dalai Lama has been both the temporal and the spiritual leader of Tibet since the 16th century. Tibetans are followers of Vajrayana (Vehicle of the Thunderbolt), or Tantric Buddhism, and believe that the Dalai Lama is the reincarnation of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara (Chenrezig in Tibetan, and Guanyin or Kuan-yin in Chinese). In 1578 Altan Khan, a Mongol ruler (Mongols also follow Vajrayana Buddhism), conferred the title Dalai Lama (meaning ocean of wisdom) on an eminent Tibetan lama, and since he was viewed as the third reincarnation of Avalokiteshvara, he became known as the Third Dalai Lama. He resided at the Potala Monastery in Lhasa. The Fifth Dalai Lama, called the Great Fifth, conferred the title Panchen Lama or Panchen Rimpoche (meaning the Great Gem of Learning) on his teacher, declaring that he was the reincarnation of Amitabha Buddha, or the Buddha of Light. The Panchen Lama presided at Tashilhunpo Monastery in Shigatse. Called Living Buddhas, they headed the Tibetan theocracy. When one died a committee of senior lamas would be appointed to find his reincarnation, directed by omens and signs. In 1933 the 13th Dalai Lama died and a search began for his reincarnation. They found him in a twoyear-old farmer’s son named Tenszin Gyatso in 1939 and enthroned him as the 14th Dalai Lama in Lhasa. In addition to his traditional education, he was taught Western subjects by an Austrian adventurer and Nazi
Heinrich Harrar, who had escaped internment by Great Britain in India. In 1950 the government of the newly founded People’s Republic of China announced its intention of taking control of Tibet, which had enjoyed autonomy, with minimal interference from China, for over half a century. Tibetan efforts to enlist aid from India, Great Britain, the United States, and the United Nations failed because no nation recognized Tibet as an independent state. As the Chinese army advanced, the Dalai and his court fled to India in December 1950, carrying with them the contents of the treasury. The authorities in Lhasa bowed to the inevitable, traveled to Beijing (Peking) in 1951, and signed a Seventeen Point Agreement that granted Tibet large measures of autonomy. With that the Dalai returned to Lhasa. In 1954 the Dalai and Panchen Lama traveled to Beijing to attend the meeting of China’s National Assembly representing Tibet. In Beijing he met with Chairman Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) and Premier Zhou Enlai (Chou En-lai), and found many of their government’s policies commendable. Relations between the Dalai Lama’s court and the Chinese government began to deteriorate when China pushed for changes and reforms and expanded its control. Tibetan resentment of Chinese repression led to violence that culminated in an armed uprising in Lhasa in 1959. Fearing detention by the Chinese, the Dalai, his family, and his entourage left Lhasa in disguise on March 17, 1959, and crossed into India on March 30. They were given a cordial welcome by the Indian government, including a visit by Prime Minister Jawaharlal 115
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Darfur Dalai Lama: A Biography. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2003; Schell, Orville. Virtual Tibet, Searching for Shangri-La from the Himalayas to Hollywood. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2000. Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur
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The spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, the Dalai Lama continues to tour the world to speak on behalf of his people.
Nehru, and were granted political asylum, along with about 13,000 other Tibetan refugees. They were allowed to set up a government in exile in Dharmsala, located in the foothills of the Himalaya Mountains. Since 1959 the Dalai Lama has visited many countries worldwide speaking on behalf of his people and their plight. He has been a most effective spokesman for the Tibetan cause because of his charisma, fluency in English, and peaceful approach to conflict resolution. His numerous writings on Tibetan Buddhism and culture and his personal philosophy are known worldwide. In the process he has demystified the oncemysterious Tibet and the theocracy headed by a Living Buddha. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. Since 1988 he has also become more flexible on the future of Tibet, abandoning demands for independence in favor of autonomy within China. See also Tibetan Revolt (1959.) Further reading: Dalai Lama. My Land and My People. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962; Marcello, Patricia Cronin. The
In 1989 a civil war began in the African nation of Sudan after an officer in the Sudanese army, Omar alBashir, seized power through a coup d’état. The roots of this war are complex, including struggle over limited resources following a serious drought and famine in the mid-1980s, conflicting conceptions of the use of land, ethnic tensions between southern and northern peoples, and religious tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims. In addition, in a more recent development, the cultivation of oil fields in southern Sudan led the government to engage in widespread destruction of longstanding villages to profit from the production and sale of oil. Throughout the entire process the government used food and resources as weapons, often pitting different ethnic groups against each other and withholding humanitarian aid to force the population to abide by its policies. In the 17 years after the civil war began, fighting displaced more than 4 million Sudanese and killed at minimum 2 million, many of them targets of ethnic cleansing and starvation by their own government. After 2003, government brutality focused on the western region of Sudan, known as Darfur. The tensions in this region were directly linked to the ongoing struggle between pastoral and sedentary communities over land use. In 1989 this region was divided into three states: North Darfur, with its capital at Al-Fasher; South Darfur, with its capital at Nyala; and West Darfur, with its capital at Al-Jeneina. In February 2003, in response to insurrection, the, government sent in its troops, bolstered by Arab paramilitary groups known as janjawiid (roughly “armed men on horseback”), predominantly drawn from this region. In retaliation for the continued insurgency and the defiance of the civilian population, these two forces implemented a scorched-earth policy, eliminating both people and communities in a wide swath of destruction. They burned villages, destroyed crops, and stole livestock. Satellite imagery indicates that almost 50 percent of villages were completely destroyed in the western and southern regions of Darfur. Government forces and the janjawiid bombarded communities with
Democratic Progressive Party and Chen Shui-pièn (Chen Shui-bian)
aerial assaults, confiscated property, and poisoned local water supplies in order to displace millions of people. In addition to all these acts of destruction, government troops and the janjawiid murdered civilians, abducted thousands of villagers, and participated in hundreds of rapes of women and girls. Conservative estimates place the death toll in the collective region of Darfur at 200,000; other estimates range to 400,000. The majority of the deaths were due to starvation and disease, exacerbated by the government’s refusal to allow humanitarian aid, safe passage, and distribution. In early 2006 violence persisted in the region as government troops and the janjawiid destroyed non-Arab villages and drove refugees into camps along the neighboring border with Chad. The Sudanese government was directly connected to this process. The Sudanese government refused to allow humanitarian aid to flow freely into the region, to disband the janjawiid, to investigate consistently mass violence against civilians, to allow observers from the United Nations or nongovernmental agencies to document the crisis, or to permit United Nations peacekeepers on its soil. See also Islamist movements; Sudanese civil wars (1970–present). Further reading: Amnesty International. Darfur: Too Many People Killed for No Reason. London: International Secretariat of Amnesty International, February 2004; ———. Sudan: At the Mercy of Killers—Destruction of Villages in Darfur. London: International Secretariat of Amnesty International, July 2004; Human Rights Watch. Sudan. Darfur in Flames: Atrocities in Western Sudan 16, no. 5A (April 2004); Rünger, Mechthild. Land Law and Land Use Control in Western Sudan. London: Ithaca Press, 1987; de Waal, Alex. Famine that Kills: Darfur, Sudan. Rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Laura J. Hilton
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wandered into the poor tenement districts to observe the life there. At the age of 16, Day won a scholarship to the University of Illinois at Urbana, where she studied journalism. At various times throughout her life she protested against conscription, championed women’s and African-American rights, and called for an end to war. Day was jailed numerous times for her participation in nonviolent demonstrations. Day aborted her first child to please her lover, who deserted her. She was married briefly to an older man before entering a common-law marriage with a scientist. The birth of her daughter Tamar prompted a spiritual awakening that led her to the Catholic Church. She became a devout Catholic, attending daily Mass and immersing herself in Scripture. Day’s particular concern was to find an equitable way of life by which people could “feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do.” She felt the solution was a return to the land and worker ownership of the means of production. In 1932 she met Peter Maurin, a poor French Catholic immigrant. Together they formed the Catholic Worker Movement. The Catholic Worker was a journal Day and Maurin used to spread the news of the movement. They also formed Catholic Worker houses of hospitality and farms, where people would live together and share their resources with one another. These venues pitted the gospel against the realities of human weakness, often with disappointing results. Viewed in her time as a revolutionary, Day’s radicalism as she applied it to the gospel now inspires many to view her as a saint. Pope John Paul II approved the opening of her cause for canonization in 2000. Further reading: Day, Dorothy. The Long Loneliness. San Francisco: Harper, 1980; Koenig-Bricker, Woodeene. Meet Dorothy Day. Cincinnati, OH: Servant, 2002; Mitchell, Patricia. A Radical Love: Wisdom from Dorothy Day. Ijamsville, MD: The Word Among Us, 2000. Lucy Scholands
(1897–1980) U.S. religious activist Dorothy Day was a peace and social justice activist, journalist, and writer who cofounded the Catholic Worker Movement, with the aim of enabling the needy to support themselves with dignity. Day developed a concern for the poor at an early age. Her family endured the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. When her family lived in Chicago, she often
Democratic Progressive Party and Chen Shui-pièn (Chen Shui-bian) After its defeat in the civil war the Republic of China (ROC), led by the Nationalist Party (or Kuomintang, KMT), fled to Taiwan, an island province, while the Chinese Communist Party ruled the mainland, called
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the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Fearing invasion by the PRC and to ensure stability on Taiwan, the Nationalist government under Chiang Kai-shek prohibited the formation of opposition parties and imposed martial law in 1949; non-KMT candidates could nevertheless compete as independents or nonpartisans in local elections. Although most citizens accepted the restrictions as a necessary price for living a relatively free and increasingly prosperous life, some criticized the mainlander-dominated KMT for monopolizing national power. Chiang Kai-shek died in 1975. His eldest son, Chiang Ching-kuo, was elected president in 1978 and reelected in 1984. Ching-kuo left important legacies. One was political reforms that included ending martial law in 1987, granting full freedoms, and allowing the formation of competing political parties. He also declared that no member of the Chiang family would succeed him and promoted highly educated younger people, including native-born Taiwanese, to power. One was his vice president, Taiwan-born Lee Teng-hui. Unlike the chaotic political changes during the same period in the Philippines and South Korea, Taiwan’s transition to democracy was peaceful. In 1986 a previously “illegal” political party became legal. It was called the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and gained about 20 percent of the popular votes in legislative elections that year. After Chiang’s death in 1989, Lee Teng-hui accelerated the pace of political reforms and won two terms as president. Fractures within the KMT caused by Lee’s policies resulted in the victory of DPP candidate Chen Shui-bian (born 1950) a lawyer, in the 2000 presidential elections with 39 percent of the popular vote (compared with 60 percent combined votes for the KMT and its splinter People First Party candidates). Chen won a second term in 2004 with a very slim majority, but the KMT and its allies won a comfortable majority in the legislature. Taiwan’s stable democratic transition with a competitive party system was remarkable. However, it was accompanied by a new kind of corruption, locally called “black and gold politics,” that is, crime and money influencing the political process, a situation unknown under authoritarian rule. Chen Shui-bian was popular among some Taiwanese for promoting a local identity and a thinly veiled goal of separating from China. Since the PRC regarded Taiwan as a renegade province and has not disavowed force to compel it to rejoin the motherland, Chen and the DPP’s policies have heightened tensions across the Taiwan Strait.
And after China became Taiwan’s second-largest trading partner in 2000, Chen’s political stance and corrupt rule resulted in a downturn in Taiwan’s economy. Despite the end of the United States-ROC Mutual Defense Treaty in 1979, the United States continued to sell arms to Taiwan and remained interested in maintaining the people of Taiwan’s right to selfdetermination. Thus the unsettled relations between the two Chinas constituted the most important source of friction between the PRC and the United States. Further reading: Lee, Wei-chin, and T. Y. Yang, eds. Sayonara to the Lee Teng-hui Era, Politics in Taiwan, 1988–2000. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2003; Myers, Ramon H., ed. Two Societies in Opposition: The Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China After Forty Years. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991. Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur
Democratic Republic of the Congo (Zaïre) This country, located in central Africa, is bounded by the Republic of the Congo to the west; Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, and Uganda on the east; Zambia and Angola on the south; and Sudan and the Central African Republic on the north. The capital city is Kinshasa, which changed its name from Leopoldville in 1964. The topography varies from tropical rain forests to mountainous terraces, plateau, savannas, dense grasslands, and mountains. Its region is dominated by the Congo River system, so it has a main role in economic development, transportation, and freshwater supply. This country has equatorial location; as a consequence the climate is hot and humid with large amounts of precipitation in the central river basin and eastern highlands, but it presents periodic droughts in the south. The majority of the population is Christian, predominantly Roman Catholic but Protestants also. There are other indigenous beliefs. Although French is the official language of the country, 700 local languages and dialects are spoken because DRC has over 200 ethnic groups, mainly of Bantu origin. The population was estimated at 58 million in 2004 and has grown quickly. The DRC has a vast potential of natural resources and mineral wealth such as cobalt, diamonds, gold, copper, coal, uranium, crude oil, and tin. Most of these are export commodities. The agricultural production basis of the DRC is diversified; the wooden resources
A village scene depicts life in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a country that has had a troubled, unstable history.
are quite large, and it holds an enormous hydroelectric potential. The programs and policies of structural adjustment set by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have a ruling presence in the country. In the 1980s, the IMF played a leading role in the economic policies adopted by the DRC. In exchange, the country‘s external debt was reconsidered and the IMF awarded a considerable loan. In 1989 the DRC was forced to establish a new economic reform due to economic instability. On the whole, the adjustments have improved the macroeconomic conditions in some countries, but the population’s living standards have worsened. Relative peace in the country in 2002 let President Joseph Kabila, son of the first DRC president, begin implementing an economic plan, helped by the IMF and World Bank; exports increased, improving the situation. But a country with immense economic resources continues to be dependent on external donors. In 1959, as an answer to the increasing demands for complete independence by the main nationalistic parties, the DRC’s government announced the forthcoming elections with the aim of establishing an autonomous government. In 1960 the Belgian Congo proclaimed its independence and was renamed Republic of Congo. In 1966 the country became Democratic Republic of the Congo. The post-independence period was distinguished by instability. Ethnic disputes and military revolts had provoked violent disorders, all of which intensified when the prime minister of the mineral-rich province of Katanga proclaimed his independence from the country and asked Belgium for military help.
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A United Nations peacekeeping force was called to restore order. However, Col. Joseph Désiré Mobutu, chief of staff of the army, took over the government and declared himself president. In 1971 he renamed the country the Republic of Zaïre. During the cold war, Mobutu continued to enforce his one-party system of government, but at the end of this period the regime suffered from external and internal pressures, and he acceded to implement a multiparty system with elections and a constitution. In fact, Mobutu continued ruling until 1997. Between 1994 and 1996 Zaïre was involved in the Rwanda conflict, hosting large numbers of refugees in its border territory. This situation caused trouble when the presence of Hutu refugees, among them several responsible for the Rwanda genocide, provoked the Tutsis to revolt. This rebellion, supported by the United States, Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, and Angola, spread over the Zaïre territory, weakening Mobutu’s regime, which was supported by France. This first war in Congo ended when rebel leader Laurent-Désiré Kabila, declared himself president and changed the name of the nation back to Democratic Republic of the Congo. But relations between Kabila and his foreign backers deteriorated, and in 1998 Kabila’s government was subsequently challenged. Troops from Zimbabwe, Angola, Namibia, Chad, and Sudan intervened to support him. The series of wars in this nation was determined not only by ethnic factors but also by natural resources. The control of diamonds and other important minerals has contributed to encourage both wars as well as the maintenance of the authoritarian governments. In 1999 a cease-fire was finally signed, but Kabila was assassinated in 2001. He was succeeded by his son Joseph, who signed a peace agreement with Rwanda the next year and established a transitional government. With the United Nations presence, a new constitution was formally adopted in 2006, and on July 30 the first free multiparty elections were held. In November 2006 Joseph Kabila won the presidency in the country’s first democratic elections since 1960. See also Mobutu Sese Seko. Further reading: Klare, Michael T. Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict. New York: Henry Holt, 2001; Manning, Patrick. Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa 1880– 1985. Cambridge University Press, 1988; Nzongola-Ntalja, George. From Zaïre to The Democratic Republic of Congo. Current African Issues No. 28. Second and revised edition. Nordiska: Afrikainstitutet. 2004. Verónica M. Ziliotto
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Deng Xiaoping (Teng Hsiao-p’ing)
(1904–1997) leader of the Chinese Communist Party Deng Xiaoping was born on August 22, 1904. As leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Deng was not officially the leader of China but acted as such during the late 1970s until his death. Deng’s legacy was the creation of a Chinese form of socialism with limited economic liberalization. Many Communist hard-liners, however, argued that Deng represented a threat and the potential of a return to capitalism. The divided opinion within the CCP with regard to Deng would be a pattern throughout his career. It was under Deng’s “second generation” of leadership that China became one of the fastest-growing world economies. Deng left China in 1920 to work and study in France. He quickly gravitated to many of his seniors on the trip—including Zhou Enlai (Chou En-lai). Deng’s studies focused on the study of Marxism; in 1922 he joined the Communist Party of Chinese Youth in Europe. By 1924 Deng became a member of the Chinese Communist Party. He returned to China in 1929, led the failed uprising in the Guangxi (Kwangsi) province, then fled to Jiangxi (Kiangsi) province. Deng participated in the Long March (1934–35) and guerrilla campaigns against Japan in World War II as well as in the civil war against the Kuomintang. He became mayor and political commissar of the city of Chongqing (Chungking). Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) promoted him to several prominent posts. Mao’s 1957 Anti-Rightist Campaign offered Deng the opportunity to work closely with another Communist leader, Liu Shaoqi (Liu Shao-chi). As a result of Mao’s Great Leap Forward and the economic disaster that followed, Deng and Shaoqi took over control of the CCP and government and implemented a number of less radical and pragmatic policies. The Cultural Revolution, begun by Mao in 1966, dealt a major blow to Deng’s career, and he was disgraced. By 1974, Chinese premier Zhou Enlai was able to bring Deng back to power, taking over as first deputy premier in charge of running the day-to-day affairs. However, the radical Gang of Four, committed to the ideals of the Cultural Revolution, viewed Deng as a significant threat and were able to purge him once again from his positions. Deng’s next opportunity came with Mao’s death in 1976, and he quickly emerged as Mao’s successor. After 1978 Deng implemented policies that improved relations with the West, traveling to Washington in 1979 to meet President Jimmy Carter. Rela-
tions with Japan improved as well. In 1984 China signed an agreement with Great Britain for the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997. China promised not to interfere with Hong Kong’s capitalist system for 50 years. Deng implemented the Four Modernizations Program in agriculture, industry, science and technology, and the military. The goal of the modernization program was to create a more modern Chinese economy. Under him China encouraged direct foreign investment and created special economic zones. The Tiananmen Square massacre is the most controversial of all Deng’s policy decisions. Mass student demonstrations in favor of democratic reforms were met with a violent military crackdown ordered by Deng and his senior associates that resulted in thousands of deaths in Beijing and dozens of other cities in China. It was followed by widespread repression, which stained his career. Further reading: Gittings, John. The Changing Face of China. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005; Marti, Michael. China and the Legacy of Deng Xiaoping: From Communist Revolution to Capitalist Evolution. Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2002; Yang, Benjamin. Deng: A Political Biography. New York: East Gate Books, 1997. Matthew H. Wahlert
disarmament, nuclear During and after the cold war, the United States and the Soviet Union conducted a series of talks and signed several treaties dealing with arms control and nuclear disarmament. Arms control entails the limitation of nuclear weapons or delivery systems, while nuclear disarmament indicates the actual reduction of nuclear weapons. Beginning with the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) in 1987, the powers would begin the process of nuclear disarmament. After dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 to end World War II, the United States had a monopoly on nuclear weapons. In June 1946, at the first meeting of the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission, the United States presented the Baruch Plan, offering to turn over its stockpile of atomic weapons to a United Nations international agency if all other countries would pledge not to produce them and agree to a system of inspection. At that time the Soviet Union was in the process of developing its own nuclear weapons and
rejected the plan, arguing that the United Nations was dominated by the United States and western Europe. The Soviet Union became a nuclear power in 1949 and by the mid-1950s had proposed a gradual reduction in conventional military forces, to be followed by an eventual destruction of nuclear stockpiles. In 1959 Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, in a speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations, called for total nuclear disarmament within four years. The United States refused to accept these recommendations without on-site inspections to verify disarmament agreements. The Soviet Union refused to allow nuclear inspectors on its territory, and there would little progress on the issue of disarmament between the two powers in the 1950s. After the United States and the Soviets came to the brink of war in the Cuban missile crisis, the focus of the two superpowers moved away from nuclear disarmament toward preventing the testing, deployment, and proliferation of these weapons. In August 1963 the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain—which had become a nuclear power in 1952—signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, which banned nuclear tests in the atmosphere, outer space, and underwater. In July 1968 the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Under the terms of the treaty the nuclear powers pledged never to furnish nuclear weapons or nuclear technology to nonnuclear powers. The treaty also created a international inspection team under the United Nations International Atomic Energy Administration to verify compliance with the terms of the treaty. After his election in 1968, President Richard Nixon sought an easing of diplomatic tensions with the Soviet Union, a process known as détente. The Soviet Union also was looking to ease tensions with the West. Both sides came to the conclusion that the cold war was costing too much and sought to achieve their foreign policy goals through negotiations and peaceful coexistence rather than confrontation. In January 1969 the Soviet Union proposed negotiations for the limitation of nuclear delivery vehicles and defensive systems. President Nixon endorsed the talks, and in so doing altered U.S. policy away from nuclear superiority. This change in policy was the result of the Soviet arms buildup in the 1960s, which had led to strategic parity between the two superpowers. salt i Negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union, known as the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I), began in November 1969. These talks culmi-
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nated in the signing of the SALT I Treaty in May 1972. This treaty placed limits on specific nuclear weapons. The SALT I Treaty was to be valid for five years, and the two sides began negotiations for a new agreement to take effect after the expiration of this treaty. The two sides agreed on a ceiling of 2,400 total delivery vehicles, with each side equipping no more than 1,320 missiles with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs). After 1974 talks slowed because of disagreements over which types of weapons should count under the 2,400 ceiling. The two sides failed to come to an agreement. From 1977 to 1979 the United States and the Soviets began new negotiations, known as the SALT II talks. These talks culminated in the SALT II Treaty signed by President Jimmy Carter and Soviet president Leonid Brezhnev on June 22, 1979. This treaty implemented the principle of equal aggregate limits, placing numerical limits on each side’s nuclear arsenal. The treaty allowed 2,400 total strategic vehicles (reduced to 2,250 in 1981) and limited MIRV ballistic and MIRV intercontinental ballistic missiles. With the principle of equal aggregate limits in place, both superpowers sought to end unrestricted competition for strategic superiority. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, and U.S. domestic political opposition, influenced the U.S. Senate to refuse to ratify the treaty. Despite this fact, both sides agreed to adhere to the terms of the treaty as long as the other complied as well. By 1986, however, both sides were producing weapons programs that led the other to charge it with rejecting the provisions of the treaty. Strategic Arms Reduction Talks Treaty In 1981 President Ronald Reagan focused on alleged Soviet military superiority and began the largest peacetime buildup in U.S. history. Despite this arms buildup, Reagan agreed to abide by the limits in the SALT II Treaty. In 1982 Reagan called for the resumption of strategic arms reduction talks, later termed START. Shortly after Mikhail Gorbachev became Soviet general secretary in March 1985, he announced a postponement of the planned deployment of intermediate-range missiles in Europe until November and expressed a willingness to reenter talks with the United States. By July he suspended all Soviet nuclear tests. In November Gorbachev and Reagan met at the Geneva Summit, breaking the period of deteriorating relations since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The leaders also announced the beginning of new talks.
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Gorbachev and Reagan met again at the Reykjavík Summit in October 1986. In these meetings the two sides came to some broad understandings on reductions in long-range nuclear weapons, the elimination of strategic missiles, removal of medium-range missiles from Europe, a reduction in weapons testing, and on-site verification. The summit was abruptly terminated when the Soviets insisted that the agreement was contingent on ending further research into the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) and Reagan refused this condition. Gorbachev and Reagan signed the Intermediaterange Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) at the Washington Summit in December 1987 after the Soviet Union separated its opposition to SDI from the larger question of nuclear missiles in Europe. In this agreement both sides promised to destroy all ground-launched intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe with a range of 300 to 3,400 miles (approximately 2,300 missiles) and begin a system of on-site inspections. The INF Treaty was ratified by the U.S. Senate and the Supreme Soviet and went into effect after the Moscow Summit in May 1988. In July 1991 Reagan’s successor, President George H. W. Bush, and Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks Treaty (START). START restricted ballistic warheads and launchers, cut land-based ICBMS, and provided for on-site verification. This treaty reduced U.S. and Soviet strategic nuclear forces by about 30 percent. In September 1991 President Bush proposed that both sides dismantle all of their ground-launched tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs). Gorbachev agreed, and all such weapons were scheduled to be destroyed. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, the four former Soviet republics possessing nuclear weapons—Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan—signed the Lisbon Protocol to START I, thereby agreeing to recognize Russia as the heir to the Soviet nuclear arsenal. The three non-Russian republics agreed to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty as nonnuclear states and transfer all their nuclear warheads to Russia within seven years. President Bush continued to campaign for further cuts in strategic nuclear weapons, proposing dramatic cuts in the number of warheads in existing groundand sea-launched weapons systems. Bush also unilaterally and effectively canceled the U.S. nuclear modernization program. Bush and Russian president Boris Yeltsin signed START II in January 1993, which provided for a 25 percent reduction in each
country’s strategic forces to 3,000–3,500 warheads over 10 years. The two sides further agreed to the total elimination of MIRV intercontinental ballistic missiles. In a landmark symbolic gesture in 1994, Presidents Bill Clinton and Yeltsin announced that their longrange missiles would no longer be targeted at each other’s territory. In May 2002 Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin signed the Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty, reducing the number of nuclear warheads to a range of 1,700 to 2,200 within 10 years. Although there remain some escape clauses and conditions, many view this agreement as the culmination of the arms control and disarmament process begun by Nixon and Brezhnev in the early 1970s. Further reading: Freedman, Lawrence. The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy. 3d ed. Basingstoke, UK, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003; Garthoff, Raymond L. Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan. Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 1994; Keylor, William R. The Twentieth-Century World and Beyond: An International History Since 1900. 5th ed. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006; Paterson, Thomas G., J. Garry Clifford, and Kenneth J. Hagan. American Foreign Relations: A History Since 1895. Vol. 2. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Michael A. Ridge, Jr.
drug wars, international The fight against drugs dates back as far as 1880, when the United States and China signed an agreement prohibiting opium’s being shipped from one country to the other. However, it was specifically under Richard Nixon’s administration in the early 1970s that the domestic war on drugs sparked renewed interest in international enforcement of curtailing the supply of illicit drugs. Actions were especially successful in Turkey, but not in Mexico—a center of the drug trade that would only strengthen over the years. Something other than interdiction efforts had to be done to upset the supply of drugs. This is when the kingpin strategy was adopted and began making the war on drugs much more international in scope, as U.S. DEA agents went after organizations, cartels, and drug lords who controlled major quantities of drugs on an international scope or gave military aid to governments that did so.
United States coast guardsmen form a chain to offload 77 bales of cocaine from the CGC Tornado.
During and after Ronald Reagan’s term, attention turned again to the war on drugs. The Reagan administration pressured Colombian officials to cooperate in the international drug war by extraditing accused cocaine traffickers. Yet many officials who cooperated in such efforts were killed. A prime example of the risk of cooperation was seen in the Medellín cartel’s attack on November 6, 1985, on the Colombian Supreme Court, in which they killed over 200 people and destroyed extradition requests. The 1988 United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances argued that continued illicit drug trafficking undermined legitimate economies, threatened stability, and mandated international cooperation in seizing drugrelated assets. Shortly thereafter, in 1989, the Joint Task Force 6 (JTF-6, also known as JTF-North) was formed.
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By 1995 this force would be 700 soldiers strong, with 125 specifically stationed, ready for combat, on the U.S.Mexican border; they killed the first suspected drug trafficker, Esequiel Hernandez, there in 1997. In 1991 the Posse Comitatus Act amendments allowed the military to train civilian police in counter-drug practices. A decade later the U.S. Coast Guard was given machine guns and sniper rifles to assist in efforts to interdict drug traffickers. Shortly thereafter, efforts shifted beyond policing the U.S. borders for traffickers to sending assistance to policing efforts far from the borders. In July 2000 Congress earmarked $1.3 billion for Plan Colombia military aid—adding 60 combat helicopters, bringing the number of U.S. troops in Colombia to 500, and training the Colombian military to eradicate coca and fight the FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), the country’s largest rebel group. Efforts in the international war on drugs were not limited to Colombia. U.S. forces worked with the Peruvian air force as part of the Air Bridge Denial (ABD) program. The program was implemented to shoot down aircraft, such as that belonging to the infamous Pablo Escobar (leader of the Medellín cartel). ABD was stopped shortly after the April 2001 shooting down of a civilian aircraft carrying a U.S. missionary and a child. It resumed again in Colombia in August 2003 and had forced down 24 drug-trafficking aircraft by 2004, according to U.S. congressman Mark Souder (R-IN). While Mexico and Colombia have arguably been the center of attention in the international war on drugs, other frontline battles against heroin and opium production have occurred, including the countries of the historical and current leaders in the production of opium and its derivatives—morphine and heroin—in the Golden Triangle (Burma, Laos, and Thailand) and the Golden Crescent (Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan). In recent years, the White House Drug Control Policy Office has been working with China to prevent drug trafficking through China to the United States. Many continue to argue that international drug wars to reduce supply are less successful and much more bloody than drug wars focused on reducing demand. Some argue that reducing demand is the only way to stop supply in the $400 billion (estimated) global narcotics business. Further reading: MacCoun, Robert, Peter Reuter, and Charles Wolf, Jr. Drug War Heresies: Learning from Other Vices, Times, and Places (RAND Studies in Policy Analysis). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001; Rabasa, Angel, and Peter Chalk. Colombian Labyrinth: The Synergy of Drugs and Insurgency and Its Implications for Regional
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Instability. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2001; Simmons, Geoff. Colombia: A Brutal History. London: SAQI Press, 2004. Ashley Thirkill-Mackelprang
Dutch New Guinea/West Irian On the western side of Papua New Guinea (PNG) is situated West Irian, a province of Indonesia. A colony of the Netherlands after August 1828, it was known earlier as Dutch New Guinea or West New Guinea. In 1961 it was renamed Irian Barat (West Irian), and in 1973 it was renamed Irian Jaya. The whole of western New Guinea was named Papua in 2002. In February 2003 the western portion of Papua was separated and renamed West Irian Jaya. The Indonesia constitutional court in 2004 did not allow the division of Papua into three regions, but accepted the creation of the West Irian Jaya province, carved from Papua’s western region. The Netherlands controlled Dutch New Guinea even after the Hague Agreement of December 1949, which transferred sovereignty to the Indonesian federal government. The Indonesian leader Ahmed Sukarno (1901–70) did not want any remnant of Dutch colonialism. The Indonesian army occupied New Guinea in 1961. An agreement was signed on August 15, 1962, by which power was transferred to the United Nations Temporary Executive Authority (UNTEA) for six years from 1963. Indonesia had administrative power over the territory from May 1, 1963. West Irian was incorporated with Indonesia as its 27th province in November 1969. This Act of Free Choice was not accepted by various groups and raised controversy. In the U.S. Congress a bill was brought in 2006 that questioned the validity of the Act of Free Choice. The independence leaders also had not accepted the merger of West Irian with Indonesia in the act. Opposition to Indonesian rule and the desire for independence as a free nation were held by a sizable portion of the population. In December 1963 the Organisasi Papua Merdeka (OPM, or Free Papua Movement) was established. It launched a guerrilla campaign against the Indonesian government in 1970 and set up an independent government the next year. Its military wing, known as the Liberation Army of OPM, indulged in terrorist activities. Kelly Kwalik, the commander, was responsible for the kidnapping of Indonesians and foreigners. He had also targeted the multinationals operat-
ing in the region. Moses Werror was the chairperson of the Revolutionary Council of OPM, based in Madang, Papua New Guinea. The Satgas Papua is another proindependence organization. Theys Hijo Eluay’s (1937– 2001) Lembaga Musyawarah Adat Papua (Papuan Customary Council Assembly) believed in nonviolent methods. Eluay was murdered in 2001. The Indonesian armed forces along with its paramilitary group, Barisan Merah Putih, was active in suppressing the secessionist movement. The clashes between the army and the rebels continued from 2003 to 2004. The Papua governor, J. P. Salossa, wanted serious implementation of autonomy status. The Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, had invited Governor Salossa and Papua provincial council speaker Jhon Ibo to Jakarta on August 10, 2006, for talks. Further reading: Bertrand, Jacques. Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict in Indonesia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004; Emek, Patrick. Indonesia’s State of Terror: West Papua. London: Mandala, 2003; Moore, Clive. New Guinea: Crossing Boundaries and History. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003; Rutherford, Danilyn. Raiding the Land of the Foreigners: The Limits of the Nation on an Indonesian Frontier. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003. Patit Paban Mishra
Duvalier dictatorship (Haiti, 1957–1986) One of the Western Hemisphere’s most repressive and brutal dictatorships, the successive regimes of François “Papa Doc” Duvalier (1907–71) and his son JeanClaude “Baby Doc” Duvalier (1951– ), ruled Haiti with an iron fist from 1957 to 1986, when Baby Doc was overthrown following widespread civil strife and massive street protests. With the support of the nation’s security forces, its leading elite families, and a substantial proportion of its urban and rural poor, the elder Duvalier was elected president in 1957. A physician educated at the Haitian National University Medical School, and a reputed practitioner of voodoo (Vodun), Papa Doc created a cult of personality around his person, which he projected as the embodiment of the Haitian nation. After violently suppressing all organized opposition to his rule, in 1964 he proclaimed himself “president for
life,” as he remained until his death in 1971, when his son assumed his political mantle. Violent political oppression and grinding economic poverty for the country’s majority characterized the nearly three decades of Duvalier rule. Running the country as their personal fiefdom, the Duvaliers terrorized their political and personal foes through their infamous secret police, the Tontons Macoutes (“Bogeymen”), a state security apparatus responsible for mass imprisonment. The roots of the Duvalier dictatorship stretch deep into Haitian history, from its independence in 1804, through a succession of dictatorial regimes, to the U.S. military intervention of 1915–34, which laid the groundwork for the modern Haitian state. This included its armed forces, the gendarmerie—later the Garde d’Haïti, or Garde—which centralized the state’s violence-making capacities within a single institution, based in Port-auPrince. It was from within the structures of this U.S.created security apparatus that the two Duvaliers based their power after 1957. Under Duvalier rule (Duvalierism), Haiti became a pariah state internationally, with the United States suspending diplomatic relations in May 1963, even as many U.S. and other foreign firms continued to do business in the country. From the 1960s to 1980s, Haiti emerged as a key assembly point for many U.S. manufacturers. In 1966, 13 U.S. corporations owned assembly plants
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in Haiti; in 1981 the number had risen to 154. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Haitians remained mired in poverty. In 1986, the year of Baby Doc’s ouster, the poorest 60 percent of the country’s population earned an annual per capita income of $60, according to the World Bank. Malnutrition, infant mortality, and other social indices marked Haiti as the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country. At the top of the social hierarchy a handful of economically and politically powerful families—most prominently the Brandt, Mevs, Accra, Bigio, and Behr mann families—controlled many of the island’s key industries, including sugar, textiles, construction materials, cooking oil, and others. This combination of extreme poverty and severe political oppression largely explain the meteoric rise to power of the anti-Duvalier radical populist preacher Jean-Bertrand Aristide following Baby Doc’s overthrow in 1986. Further reading: Laguerre, Michel S. The Military and Society in Haiti. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993; Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Haiti: State Against Nation: Origins and Legacy of Duvalierism. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1990. Michael J. Schroeder
E Eastern bloc, collapse of the The end of the cold war was the collapse of the binary international power structure instigated by the military and political rivalry of the United States and the Soviet Union in the wake of World War II. It was also a consequence of the reforms initiated by the first secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in the years 1985–91, Mikhail Gorbachev; the result was the collapse of the Soviet Union and the demise of communist systems in the countries of eastern Europe. east germany One of the symbolic moments announcing the end of the cold war was the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1990. The Berlin Wall was built in August 1961 in order to prevent refugee migration from the communist German Democratic Republic (GDR) to the Western Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). During the era of the leadership of Erich Honecker, the first secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany from 1971, the GDR remained an orthodox socialist and highly repressive state. The GDR leadership maintained its dictatorial and conservative character. In fact, a diplomatic discord developed between reform-oriented Gorbachev and Honecker in the late 1980s. In the summer of 1989 Hungary decided to open its boundaries with Austria. A number of GDR residents moved to West Germany though Hungary and Austria. In connection with Gorbachev’s visit at the 40th anniversary of the establishment of GDR, pro-reformist
and pro-democratic demonstrations were organized in Leipzig and Berlin, which subsequently spread through the whole GDR. The protesters demanded government guarantees that human rights and civic rights would be respected, as well as that democratic restructuring be initiated. On November 9, 1989, the vehement civic protests and the confusion of the party leadership resulted in an unanticipated decision to annul the requirement for exit visas of East German residents who were crossing the border between the GDR and FRG. On November 10, five crossing points in the Berlin Wall were opened and approximately 40,000 East Berliners crossed into West Berlin. The atmosphere of festivity and celebration prevailed among the crowds, and people on both sides of the Berlin Wall started to make openings in the wall and bring parts of it down. On December 22 the Brandenburg Gate officially opened. The image of East and West Berliners jointly destroying the Berlin Wall became a powerful symbol of the collapse of the cold war and of the termination of the division of Europe. Honecker resigned from his post as the first secretary of the party and as the chairman of the Council of State of the GDR on October 18, 1989, and was temporarily replaced by another Communist politician, Egon Krenz. Honecker later fled to Moscow and was extradited in 1992, but avoided trial for health reasons. In March 1990 the first postcommunist democratic elections took place, and the Christian Democratic Union of Germany achieved victory. The collapse of the Berlin Wall also paved the path for the reunification of Germany. On October 3, 1990, the GDR ceased to exist, and its territory 127
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Eastern bloc, collapse of the zelski served as the president of Poland from 1989 to 1990, when Wałe˛sa was elected to that post in presidential elections. In 1991 free parliamentary elections were organized, and a coalition government of anticommunist groups emerged. The party Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland was formed in 1990 with no official ideological ties, but with evident personal ones, to its communist predecessor.
Prior to its eventual dismantling, the Berlin Wall became a site for grafitti, much of it in favor of the destruction of the wall.
became absorbed by the state of Germany. In 1990 the Socialist Unity Party of Germany transformed itself into the Party of Democratic Socialism. poland In Poland, an indication of increased political relaxation took place between 1986 and 1987 with a general amnesty of political prisoners. A series of strikes in 1988 pressured the communist authorities to re-legalize the independent trade union Solidarity, which had been made illegal after martial law was instituted in Poland in 1981. At that time the first secretary of the Polish Communist Party and the head of state was General Wojciech Jaruzelski. In spring 1989 the reform-oriented factions of the Polish Communist Party decided to enter talks with the dissident groups associated with the Solidarity movement. The negotiations were chaired both by Lech Wałe˛sa, leader of the Solidarity movement and a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, and by Czesław Kiszczak, a chief of the Polish secret services and the minister of internal affairs beginning in 1981. The negotiators agreed that Solidarity would be re-legalized and that partially free parliamentary elections would be organized. The parliamentary elections on June 4, 1989, brought an overwhelming majority of representatives from Solidarity, which had transformed into the Solidarity Citizens’ Committee. It received 161 of 460 total seats in the Sejm and 99 of 100 total seats in the Senate. A coalition government was formed with a Catholic dissident, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, as prime minister. Jaru-
hungary In Hungary, the deteriorating economic situation, due to increasing foreign debt, spurred public debates on the possibility of introducing radical reform policies. They facilitated the creation of the opposition movement, the Hungarian Democratic Forum, on September 27, 1987. The leader was József Antall, a historian who was known for his engagement in the Hungarian revolt in 1956. In May 1988 the first secretary of the party, János Kádár, was removed from his post and replaced by Károly Grósz. Grósz was inclined to introduce moderate economic reforms within the systemic socialist framework, but was opposed to the idea of organizing a roundtable discussion between the party and the anticommunists At the congress in October 1989, the power within the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party was seized by soft-liners such as Gyula Horn and Imre Pozsgay. In March 1989, the Hungarian Democratic Forum held a national meeting at which it demanded democratic reforms and agreed to enter negotiations with the party representatives at the elite level. On March 22, 1989, the National Roundtable Talks were organized, and their results were a series of reformatory events: The power monopoly of the party was abandoned, the constitution was amended, and multiparty democracy was reconstituted in 1989. In October 1989 the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party renounced its Marxist-Leninist legacy and endorsed a social-democratic political direction, changing its name to the Hungarian Socialist Party. In April 1990 democratic parliamentary elections took place. The result was the victory of the Hungarian Democratic Forum, and its leader, József Antall, became prime minister of the coalition government. Czechoslovakia In Czechoslovakia in January 1989, students organized a peaceful rally to commemorate the anniversary of the suicide of Jan Palach, a student who committed self-immolation as an act of demonstration against the Warsaw Pact invasion of the country in 1968 dur-
ing the Prague Spring. The student demonstrations were brutally broken down by the riot police. Another student demonstration was organized by the Socialist Youth Union on November 17, 1989, in Prague and Bratislava. More than 30,000 participating students commemorated the anniversary of the murder of another Czech student figure, Jan Opletal, who was killed in 1939 by pro-Nazi forces. On November 19, different opposition and human rights groups created Civic Forum. Its spokesman became Václav Havel. Together with its Slovak counterpart, the Public Against Violence, Civic Forum demanded the resignation of the first secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, Miloš Jakeš, holding him responsible for the maltreatment of the demonstrating students. On November 24 Jakeš resigned from his post. On the same day Alexander Dubcˇek, the architect of the Prague Spring events, made a public speech. On November 28 Prime Minister Ladislav Adamec declared abandonment of the power monopoly of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. On December 17 there was an official spectacle of cutting through the wire border between Czechoslovakia and Austria. The first postcommunist democratic parliamentary elections took place in June 1990. Two anticommunist blocs, the Civic Forum and the Public against Violence, emerged victorious, with over 50 percent of the votes. The Czechoslovak transformation was called the Velvet Revolution, because in spite of the deeply orthodox and dictatorial character of the Czechoslovak communist regime, the collapse of the system and the initiation of democratic change were accomplished without violence. Bulgaria In Bulgaria the late 1980s witnessed the emergence of discriminatory nationalistic policies authored by the president of Bulgaria and the first secretary of the Bulgarian Communist Party, Todor Zhivkov. These were directed against Bulgaria’s large Turkish minority. The result was a massive emigration of the Bulgarian Turks and a rapidly deteriorating economic situation in the country. This increased opposition against Zhivkov among reform-oriented members of the party. During the Central Committee meeting on November 10, 1989, the foreign minister, Patur Mladenov, condemned Zhivkov’s hard-line economic policies and authoritarianism and managed to secure Zhivkov’s removal from his leadership position. Mladenov consequently took over Zhivkov’s secretarial and presidential posts. Famously, he publicly pledged a turn toward political
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democratization, far-reaching economic reforms, and amnesty for political prisoners. In January 1990 pro-democracy demonstrations involving 40,000 people took place in Sofia. As a consequence the Bulgarian National Assembly made a number of path-paving decisions: The power monopoly of the Bulgarian Communist Party was revoked, the Bulgarian secret police was dismantled, and Zhivkov was charged with fraud and corruption. In April 1990 the Bulgarian National Assembly elected Mladenov as president and subsequently dissolved itself. The Bulgarian Communist Party renounced its ideological attachment to Leninism and transformed itself into the Bulgarian Socialist Party, with Alexander Lilov as its chairman. In June 1990 postcommunist democratic elections were organized and the Bulgarian Socialist Party achieved a narrow victory. Later Mladenov was forced to resign from his presidential post after it was made public that he had considered the possibility of using force against the pro-democratic demonstrators in Sofia earlier that year. On August 1, 1990, he was replaced by Zhelyu Mitev Zhelev, a former oppositionist, professor of philosophy, and founder of the dissident Club for the Support of Glasnost and Restructuring. He was reelected in 1992 and remained in the presidential post until 1997. Zhelev represented the Union of Democratic Forces, a party that consisted of various anticommunist groups formed in December 1989. In November 1990 a series of general strikes was organized, which instigated a sense of political and economic crisis in the country and which brought about the complete discrediting of the Bulgarian Socialist Party. In 1991 a new democratic constitution was adopted, and in 1992 the Union of Democratic Forces took over power in the national elections and embarked on a series of radical economic and political reforms. Romania In Romania the Communist dictatorship of President Nicolae Ceaus¸escu was particularly oppressive. Although in other East European countries popular demonstrations and negotiations took place throughout 1989, it seemed that Ceaus¸escu’s position would remain unchallenged. On December 17 street protests were organized in the city of Timis¸oara against the decision by the Romanian Secret Police (Securitate) to deport local bishop László Tokés. The protests against Tokés’s eviction were transformed into anticommunist and antiCeaus¸escu demonstrations. Hundreds of demonstrators who gathered on the streets of Timis¸oara were attacked
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by military forces. Nearly 100 of them were killed, and many more were injured. Beginning on December 20 the antiregime demonstrations and a wave of strikes took place in Romania’s other large cities. Ceaus¸escu condemned the protests in Timis¸oara and ordered the organization of a pro-regime gathering in the center of Bucharest on December 21. Mass mobilization and civic unrest continued throughout the country, and the regime made extensive use of violence to put down the revolutionary occurrences. On December 22 the National Salvation Front was formed in a national TV studio. It was led by Communist politician Ion Iliescu, and its other members were Silviu Brucan, a former diplomat and an opponent of Ceaus¸escu; and Mircea Dinescu, a dissident poet. Subsequently, the National Salvation Front restored peace and formed a temporary government with Iliescu as a provisional president, following Ceaus¸escu’s execution on December 25, 1989. Later the National Salvation Front was transformed into a political party and achieved the majority of votes in the democratic elections in May 1990. The important difference between the postcommunist elections in Romania and in other East European countries was that in Romania, the victorious National Salvation Front comprised former socialist officials. In 1992 it was divided into two leftist Romanian parties: the Democratic Party and the Social Democratic Party. See also Gorbachev, Mikhail; Reagan, Ronald. Further reading: Kenney, Padraic. A Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe 1989. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002; Offe, Claus. Varieties of Transition. The East European and East German Experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997; Okey, Robin. The Demise of Communist East Europe: 1989 in Context. London: Arnold, 2004; Ross, Corey. The East German Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretation of the GDR. London: Arnold, 2002; Schweizer, Peter. The Fall of the Berlin Wall. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2000. Magdalena Zolkos
East Timor The Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, or East Timor, was a Portuguese colony until 1975. On the eve of the Portuguese departure in August 1975, a civil war broke out, leading to the deaths of 1,500 to 2,000 people. There was a unilateral declaration of indepen-
dence on November 28, 1975, by the East Timorese people. With U.S. assistance, Indonesia invaded East Timor in December. Afterward, Indonesia incorporated East Timor as its 27th province in July 1976. The United Nations (UN) did not recognize this. A guerrilla war against Indonesian occupation followed amid reports of brutality by the army. The ensuing civil war was marked by brutality, loss of life, and human rights abuses. From 1982 onward, the UN secretary-general endeavored to bring a peaceful solution to the conflict. In 1998 Indonesia was prepared to grant autonomy to East Timor, but its proposal was rejected by the East Timorese. It was decided to hold a plebiscite in East Timor, resulting in a declaration of independence on August 30, 1999. The army, along with pro-Indonesian militia, unleashed a reign of terror in East Timor. There was a pacification campaign during which more than 1,300 people were killed and 300,000 more were forcibly sent into West Timor as refugees. The ethnic conflict and genocide by Indonesian troops devastated East Timor. Violence was brought to an end by an international peacekeeping force. The Timorese tragedy had taken the lives of 21–26 percent of the population. East Timor was placed under the transitional administration of the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) on October 25, 1999. There were about 8,000 peacekeepers and civilian police helping the administration. The National Consultative Council (NCC), consisting of 11 East Timorese and four UNTAET members, worked as a political body in the transitional phase. An 88-member Constituent Assembly was elected in August 2001 to frame a new constitution. East Timor became a fully independent nation on May 20, 2002, with international recognition. Nation-building was difficult for the East Timorese. The reconstruction of their damaged infrastructure and the creation of viable administrative machinery became priorities for the new regime. The United Nations Mission of Support in East Timor (UNMISET), which had replaced the UNTAET, gave necessary support to the new government, which was headed by Xanana Gusmão. Further reading: Emmerson, Donald K., ed. Indonesia Beyond Suharto: Polity, Economy, Society, Transition. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1999; Kiernan, Ben. “Genocide and Resistance in East Timor, 1975–1999: Comparative Reflections on Cambodia.” In War and State Terrorism: The United States, Japan, and the Asia-Pacific in the Long Twentieth
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Century. Mark Selden and Alvin Y. So, eds. New York: Routledge, 2003; Ricklefs, M. C. A History of Modern Indonesia: c. 1300 to the Present. 2nd ed. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993. Patit Paban Mishra
Ebadi, Shirin
(1947– ) Iranian human rights activist Shirin Ebadi is a democracy and human rights activist and a lawyer. She was born in northwestern Iran to a Shi’i Muslim family in 1947 and studied law at Tehran University. In 1975 she became the first woman judge in Iran and was appointed president of the Tehran City Court. Following the Islamic revolution in 1979, all female judges, including Ebadi, were removed from the bench and given clerical duties. Ebadi quit in protest and wrote books and articles on human rights, particularly on the rights of children and women, for Iranian journals. After many years of struggle, in 1992, Ebadi won her lawyer’s license and opened her own practice. She is known for taking cases at the national level, defending liberal and dissident figures. In 2000 she was arrested and imprisoned for “disturbing public opinion” and was given a suspended jail sentence and barred from practicing law (the restriction was later removed). She campaigns for strengthening the legal rights of women and children, advocating a progressive version of Islam. Her legal defense in controversial cases, pro-reform stance, and outspoken opinions have caused the conservative clerics in Iran to oppose her openly. In 2003 Ebadi was the first Muslim woman and Iranian recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to promote democracy and human rights both domestically and abroad. She teaches law at Tehran University, writes books and articles, and runs her own private legal practice. Her books include The Rights of the Child (1993), Tradition and Modernity (1995), The Rights of Women (2002), and Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope (2006). See also Iran, contemporary; Iranian revolution. Further reading: Frängsmyr, Tore, ed. Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes 2003. Stockholm: Nobel Foundation, 2004; Parvis, Dr. Leo. Understanding Cultural Diversity in Today’s Complex World. London: Lulu.com, 2007. Randa A. Kayyali
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Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) One of the world’s most influential schools of economic thought was founded by the United Nations Economic and Social Council Resolution 106(VI) on February 25, 1948, as the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA; in Spanish, Comisión Económica para América Latina, or CEPAL), headquartered in Santiago, Chile. Under the intellectual leadership of Argentine economist Raúl Prebisch, Brazilian economist Celso Furtado, and others, the ECLA offered an analysis of Latin American poverty and underdevelopment radically at odds with the dominant and neoclassical “modernization” theory espoused by most economists in the industrial world. Building on the work of world-systems analysis, the ECLA pioneered an approach to understanding the causes of Latin American poverty commonly called the “dependency school” (dependencia) in which the creation of poverty and economic backwardness, manifested in “underdevelopment,” was interpreted as an active historical process, caused by specific and historically derived international economic and political structures, as conveyed in the phrase, “the development of underdevelopment.” This approach was then appropriated by scholars working in other contexts, especially Asia and Africa, as epitomized in the title of Guyanese historian Walter Rodney’s landmark book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972). Since the 1950s, the theoretical models and policy prescriptions of the ECLA have proven highly influential, sparking heated and ongoing debates among scholars. From its foundation the ECLA rejected the paradigm proposed in the neoclassical, Keynesian, modernization school, which posited “stages of growth” resulting from the transformation of “traditional” economies into “modern” economies, a perspective epitomized in U.S. economist Walter W. Rostow’s book The Stages of Economic Growth (1960). Instead, the model formulated by the ECLA posited a global economy divided into “center” and “periphery,” with the fruits of production actively siphoned or drained from “peripheral” economies based on primary export products (including Latin America) to the “center” (the advanced industrial economies of Europe and the United States). Based on this model, in the 1960s ECLA policy prescriptions centered on the promotion of domestic industries through “import substitution industrialization” (ISI), diversification of production, land reform, more equitable distribution of income and productive resources, debt relief, and increased state intervention to
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achieve these aims. Key analytic concepts of these years included “dynamic insufficiency,” “dependency,” and “structural heterogeneity.” In the 1970s attention shifted to “styles” or “modalities” of economic growth and national development. The economic crisis of the 1980s generated another shift toward issues of debt adjustment and stabilization, while the 1990s saw heightened emphasis on issues of globalization and “neostructuralism,” in opposition to the “neoliberalism” promoted by the International Monetary Fund and related international financial bodies. In 1984 the United Nations (UN) broadened the mandate of the ECLA to include the Caribbean, and it became the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC); its Spanish acronym, CEPAL, remained the same. It is one of five UN regional commissions and remained highly influential into the 21st century. Further reading: Cockroft, James D., André Gunder Frank, and Dale L. Johnson. Dependence and Underdevelopment: Latin America’s Political Economy. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1972; Furtado, Celso. Accumulation and Development: The Logic of Industrial Civilization. Oxford, UK: M. Robertson, 1983; Raúl Prebisch and Development Strategy. New Delhi: Research and Information System for the NonAligned and Other Developing Countries, 1987. Michael J. Schroeder
ecumenical movement In 1517 Martin Luther nailed Ninety-five Theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg, a university town in the German province of Saxony, to start a debate over indulgences and related questions about Christian salvation. His action is often understood to be the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. In 1529 Protestant representatives to the imperial Diet in Germany presented the Augsburg Confession, which enshrined the Protestant position at that time and is still accepted by all the Lutheran churches. The rejection of that confession by the Roman Catholics with the support of the emperor, Charles V, has since been understood by many historians as the definitive division between the Protestant and Roman Catholic Churches, resulting in a plurality of churches in Western Christendom no longer in communion with one another. Central to the Augsburg Confession was the doctrine of “justification by faith alone,” which together with “grace alone” and “scripture alone,” summarized the
Protestant concerns. In addition, the Reformers insisted on changes in worship (especially the Mass) and the sacraments, changes unacceptable to the Roman Catholics and viewed by them as heretical. What began as a movement for the reformation of the Western (Latin) Church ended up with doctrinal division and ecclesiasti cal separation. The Lutheran churches were not the only churches that came from the Reformation. Shortly after the Lutheran movement began, a similar movement, resulting in the formation of the Reformed churches, arose in Switzerland under the leadership of Ulrich Zwingli in Zurich. From there churches were established in many countries of Europe, with the predominant theological influence coming from John Calvin in Geneva. In addition, groups of radical reformers (termed Anabaptists by their opponents) were formed and were persecuted by Reformed, Lutheran, and Roman Catholic Churches alike. Each of these groups developed distinct theological positions. From them, especially from the Church of England in England and its American colonies, came many new churches including the Baptists, Methodists, and Pentecostals. In the 20th century the ecumenical movement was born. The 1910 World Christian Missionary Conference in Edinburgh is often considered its beginning. The conviction of missionaries that church division was harmful for their outreach gave rise to a worldwide (ecumenical) movement to overcome those divisions. By 1948 many of the churches affected by that movement formed the World Council of Churches, an interchurch body representing a large percentage of Protestant churches. They were, in addition, joined by many Orthodox churches— churches that had become separate from the Roman Catholic Church long before the Protestant Reformation but that are much closer in theology and practice to Catholicism than to Protestantism. At first opposed to ecumenical endeavors, the Roman Catholic Church during the Second Vatican Council in 1962–65 accepted the ecumenical movement as a fruit of “the grace of the Holy Spirit.” Afterward, it entered into more active cooperation with other churches and also began a series of dialogues over doctrinal differences with Orthodox and many Protestant churches, even though it did not join the World Council of Churches. Many Evangelical churches also did not join the World Council of Churches but have formed their own world alliance and national associations for cooperation. As a result of the ecumenical movement, the climate has changed among a large number of Christian
churches from hostility to friendliness and growing cooperation. In addition, dialogues among theologians representing their churches have produced a number of accords on previous doctrinal differences. The Faith and Order section of the World Council of Churches has sponsored multilateral dialogues. The wide-ranging 1982 statement on Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, focusing on disputed areas of worship and sacraments, is often cited as the most successful result of those endeavors. In addition, various churches or church bodies have entered into bilateral dialogues with one another. The bilateral dialogues have produced some notable doctrinal accords. Many Protestant churches have joined together or established communion with one another as a consequence of these accords. Some of the more significant have been concluded by the Roman Catholic Church with Oriental Orthodox and Assyrian churches. Commissions of Eastern Orthodox theologians have come to agreements with their Oriental Orthodox counterparts. Doctrinal differences that antedate the Reformation by a millennium are now discussed if not reconciled. The Roman Catholic Church has, in addition, conducted a series of dialogues with the Anglican Communion that have produced a body of agreed statements on many of the disputed points between the two church bodies. Not all of the important dialogues have been official dialogues between church bodies. Informal study groups like the Groupe des Dombes have made independent contributions. Perhaps the most significant result produced by such groups has been the series of statements by Evangelicals and Catholics Together, a committee of prominent Evangelicals and Roman Catholics in the United States. The first statement, The Christian Mission In the Third Millennium in 1994, was widely influential in fostering rapprochement between two Christian groups that are sometimes considered to be the farthest apart from one another. Symbolically, one of the most notable results of the bilateral accords has been the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (JDDJ), signed by official representatives of the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation. The JDDJ was prepared for by 35 years of dialogue between Lutheran and Roman Catholic theologians on the international level and the national level, most notably in the United States and Germany. In 1983 the United States dialogue produced an agreement, The Doctrine of Justification. This was followed by The Condemnations of the Reformation Era: Do They Still Divide?, a significant 1986 statement
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produced by a German study group. Then the international commission in 1993 produced Church and Justification: Understanding the Church in the Light of the Doctrine of Justification. On the basis of these and other works, the JDDJ was produced and agreed to. The JDDJ is noteworthy as being the only agreement officially accepted by the highest authority in the Roman Catholic Church and a Protestant church body. It is even more noteworthy as being an accord on the doctrine of justification, the point of disagreement that began the Reformation. While the JDDJ acknowledges that it did not resolve all questions about justification, it did resolve enough of the most fundamental ones that, in the view of the two parties, the doctrine of justification no longer had to be church dividing. Although other points of disagreement remain, the JDDJ in effect marked an official recognition by the two church bodies that they do not have incompatible views of what it is to be a Christian. The JDDJ was signed in 1999, just in time for the beginning of the new millennium. It was signed in the city of Augsburg, the city where the Augsburg Confession was presented to the emperor. It was signed on Reformation Sunday, the day that commemorates the posting of the Ninety-five Theses. The JDDJ did not put to an end the disunity caused by the Reformation. It was, however, in the minds of those who signed it, an indication that the crucial step towards ending that disunity had been taken. Further reading: Lutheran World Federation, and the Roman Catholic Church. Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000; Toon, Peter. What’s the Difference? Basingstoke, Hants: Marshalls, 1983. Stephen B. Clark
Egyptian revolution (1952) In 1952 a group of Free Officers led by Gamal Abdel Nasser overthrew the corrupt monarchy of King Farouk in a bloodless coup. After World War II and the loss to Israel in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Egypt gradually slid into political chaos. The king was known internationally for his profligacy, and the Wafd Party—the largest Egyptian party, led by Mustafa Nahhas—had been discredited by charges of corruption and cooperation with the British during the war. Other political parties, some supporting the monarchy; the small Egyptian Communist Party on the left; and the far larger
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Muslim Brotherhood on the right vied for power and sometimes engaged in terrorism and assassinations of rivals to gain power. Attacks against the British forces still stationed along the Suez Canal also escalated. The British reinforced their troops, and after fighting broke out between British soldiers and Egyptian police forces, a massive riot erupted in Cairo in January 1952. During “Black Saturday,” angry Egyptian mobs stormed European sectors, burning European-owned buildings and businesses in a demonstration of nationalist discontent and opposition to imperial control and the British refusal to leave Egypt. On July 22, 1952, the Free Officers, who had secretly been plotting to overthrow the government for some time, took key government buildings, and on July 26 they deposed King Farouk. Farouk was permitted to go into exile, and his young son Ahmad Fu’ad II was made the new king. The young officers, most of whom were in their 30s, chose the elder and more well-known Brigadier General Muhammad Naguib as their figurehead leader, although it was known within the group that Nasser was the real political force. They formed an executive branch, the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), including Anwar el-Sadat, Abd al-Hakim Amr, and Zakariyya Muhi al-Din. In January 1953 political parties were abolished in favor of one party, the Liberation Rally, and in June the monarchy was abolished in favor of a republic with Naguib as president. The new government was anti-imperialist, anticorruption, and eager to develop the Egyptian economy and to secure full and complete Egyptian independence. Naguib and Nasser soon argued over the course Egyptian politics was to take, and, after an assassination attempt against Nasser failed, allegedly by the Muslim Brotherhood, Naguib was forced to resign. Under a new constitution, Nasser was elected president in 1956, a post he would hold until his death in 1970. In 1954 the new regime negotiated an agreement with the British for the full withdrawal of British troops and an end to the 1936 treaty between the two nations. Under the agreement the old conventions regarding control of the Suez Canal by private shareholders were maintained; this issue led to a major war in 1956 after Nasser nationalized the canal. Economic development was the cornerstone of the new regime’s program. Under a sweeping land reform program, land ownership was limited to 200 feddans, and major estates, many formerly owned by the royal family, were redistributed to the peasants. Plans for the construction of one of the largest development projects of its type at the time, the Aswa¯n Dam, were
announced. Although the financing and construction of the dam became a major point of conflict between Egypt and the United States, it was duly built with Soviet assistance. With the formation of the United Arab Republic with Syria in 1958, the pan-Arab policies of Nasser seemed ascendant in the Arab world; however, the union collapsed in 1961. Egypt also became bogged down in the Yemeni civil war. In 1962 pro-Nasser forces in Yemen overthrew the weak Imam Muhammad al-Badr and established a republic. Pro-monarchy forces assisted by arms and money from Saudi Arabia supported the monarchy while Egypt assisted the republican forces with arms, money, and troops. The war dragged on, draining Egyptian resources, and Nasser referred to the conflict as his “Vietnam.” Following the disastrous Arab defeat in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Saudi Arabia and Egypt agreed to withdraw their support from both sides and, although it adopted a far more moderate and pro-Saudi stance, the Yemeni republic survived. In the 1960s Egypt turned increasingly toward the Soviet Union and state-directed socialism. In 1961 large businesses, industry, and banks were nationalized. Cooperatives for the peasants were established. With the creation of a new class of technocrats and officers, the power of the old feudal and bourgeoisie elites was gradually eliminated. In 1962 a new political party, the Arab Socialist Union (ASU), with a worker-peasant membership, was created. Under the 1962 National Charter the authoritarian state held political power exercising control from the top. The charter outlined an ambitious program of education, health care, and other social services; it also addressed the issue of birth control and family planning, as well as mandated equality of rights for women in the workplace. Many conservative forces in Egypt opposed the social changes, especially as they pertained to the family and the status of women, and consequently the social programs fell far short of their original intentions. Under Nasser, Egypt became the dominant force in the Arab world and attempted to steer a neutral course in the cold war. The Egyptian revolution failed to meet many of its domestic goals, and the state-run economy was often inefficient. Egypt’s neutrality in the 1950s alienated many Western powers and conservative Arab regimes, especially Saudi Arabia. Following Nasser’s sudden death in 1970, Anwar el-Sadat became the Egyptian president. Sadat, who showed far more political acumen than he had previously been credited with, gradually turned away from the Soviet bloc.
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Sadat forged alliances with the United States and gradually dismantled most of the revolution’s economic and social programs. See also Arab-Israeli War (1956). Further reading: Gordon, Joel. Nasser’s Blessed Movement: Egypt’s Free Officers and the July Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992; Mansfield, Peter. Nasser’s Egypt. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1965; Mohi El Din, Khaled. Memories of a Revolution: Egypt 1952. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1995; Sadat, Anwar el-. Revolution on the Nile. New York: The John Day Company, 1957. Janice J. Terry
El Salvador, revolution and civil war in (1970s–1990s) In the 1980s the small Central American country of El Salvador made world headlines as a key site of struggle in the cold war, and in consequence of its leftist revolutionary movements and civil war (conventionally dated 1980–92) that left some 70,000 dead and the economy and society ravaged. The long-term roots of the crisis have been traced to the country’s history of extreme poverty, economic inequality, and political oppression of its majority by its landholding and power-holding minority. Important antecedents include the 1932 Matanza (Massacre), in which the military and paramilitaries killed upwards of 30,000 people, ushering in an era of military dictatorship that continued to the 1980s. The 1969 Soccer War with Honduras is also cited as an important antecedent. By the mid-1970s numerous leftist revolutionary groups were offering a sustained challenge to military rule, groups that in April 1980 came together to form the revolutionary guerrilla organization Farabundo Martí Liberation Front (Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional, or FMLN). Open civil war erupted soon after July 1979, when the leftist Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua. Fearing a similar outcome in El Salvador, the U.S. government increased its military aid to the Salvadoran regime, which launched an allout assault against revolutionary and reformist organizations. From 1979 to 1981, approximately 30,000 people were killed by the military and associated rightwing paramilitaries and death squads. On March 24, 1980, a right-wing death squad assassinated the arch-
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bishop of El Salvador, Óscar Romero, after his numerous public denunciations of the military regime and its many human rights violations. In December 1980 centrist José Napoleon Duarte assumed the presidency, the first civilian to occupy that post since 1931. Interpreted by many as a civilian facade installed to obscure a military dictatorship, his administration failed to staunch the violence. Especially after Ronald Reagan became U.S. president in January 1981, U.S. military and economic assistance to the Salvadoran regime skyrocketed. Framing the issue as a cold war battle, and despite much evidence to the contrary, the Reagan administration claimed that the FMLN and its political wing, the FDR (Frente Democrático Revolucionario), were clients of Cuba and the Soviet Union. It also alleged Sandinista complicity in funneling arms to Salvadoran revolutionaries, thus legitimating U.S. support for anti-Sandinista forces in the contra war. In 1982 the extreme right-wing party, the Nationalist Republican Alliance (Alianza Republicana Nacionalista, ARENA), won the presidency in an election marred by violence and fraud. The rest of the 1980s saw continuing civil war waged under a series of ostensibly civilian governments dominated by the military. In 1991, following United Nations–sponsored talks, the government recognized the FMLN as a legal political party. In January 1992 the warring parties signed the UN-sponsored Chapultepec peace accords, and in 1993 the government declared amnesty for past violations of human rights. The civil war and its aftermath left an enduring legacy throughout the country and region. Further reading: Armstrong, Robert, and Janet Shenk. El Salvador. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1982; United Nations Security Council. From Madness to Hope: The 12Year War in El Salvador: Report of the Commission on the Truth for El Salvador. New York: United Nations, 1993. Michael J. Schroeder
environmental disasters (anthropogenic) Several major environmental disasters, those that are man-made rather than naturally occurring, have taken place after the World War II due to the emphasis on heavy industrial development. In developed countries in the late 1960s, environmental movements led the public to be more concerned about the pollution of air, water,
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and soil, and the danger of chemical agriculture. Several governments developed more policies for the preservation of the environment. The issues of environmental concerns became internationalized at the Stockholm conference in 1972, the United Nations National Conference on the Human Environment. Environmental, nongovernmental organizations started to play an important role in the deliberations. During the period 1971–75, 31 important national environmental laws were passed in the OECD countries. In 1983 the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), also known as the Brundtland Commission, was created to seek sustainable development. In December 1984 the world’s worst industrial disaster occurred in Bhopal, a city located in the northwest of Madhya Pradesh in central India. The leakage of a highly toxic gas (methyl isocyanate) from a Union Carbide pesticides plant killed more than 3,800 persons and affected more than 200,000 with permanent or partial disabilities. It is estimated that more than 20,000 people have died from exposure to the gas. Union Carbide was manufacturing pesticides, which were in demand because of the Green Revolution in India. This environmental disaster raised the public’s concern about chemical safety. Similar concerns are related to severe accidents in nuclear power plants such as the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident in the Soviet Union on April 26, 1986. The accident occurred at the block number 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. This nuclear power complex is located 100 kilometers northwest of Kiev, close to the border of Belarus. The initial explosion caused the reactor to melt down for 10 days. The result has been the discharge of radionuclides, which contaminated large areas in the Northern Hemisphere. This release of radioactive material has damaged the immune system of people in the area and has contaminated the local ecosystem. While natural processes, some as simple as rainfall, have helped restore the local environment, problems are still widespread. More than 750,000 hectares of agricultural land and 700,000 hectares of forest have been abandoned. In 2000, 4.5 million people were living in areas still considered radioactive. Two opposing explanations, poor reactor design and human error, have been advanced for the Chernobyl accident. The Chernobly accident occurred during the glasnost/perestroika era of the Soviet Union. So, while the government performed its own investigations of the tragedy, additional citizens advisory boards, some without any government involvement, were set up.
Chernobyl was not the first civilian nuclear power plant disaster. Accidents in nuclear power plant installations occurred in Windscale (in Great Britain) in 1957 and in the United States, such as in the Three Mile Island Unit 2, which was damaged during an accident in 1979. Since Chernobyl, other accidents, like those at Tokaimura (1999) and Mihama (2004)—both in Japan—have occurred. These accidents have brought the nuclear industry under greater scrutiny from the general public. Many feel that not only should the overall safety of such plants be improved, but also the preparedness and response to such disasters need to be more fully developed. The Bhopal and Chernobyl cases are disasters of similar magnitudes in terms of damage to people and the environment. The concerns go beyond safety to local populations. Today, such questions as environmental impact and sustainability have become at least as important as concerns over health and human welfare. See also environmental problems. Further reading: Dembo, David, Ward Morehouse, and Lucinda Wykle. Abuse of Power. Social Performance of Multinational Corporations: The Case of Union Carbide. Far Hills, NJ: New Horizons Press, 1990; Dinham, Barbara. Lessons from Bhopal, Solidarity for Survival. Newburyport: MA: Journeyman, 1989; Fortun, Kim. Advocacy after Bhopal: Enviromentalism, Disaster, New Global Order. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001; Lapierre, Dominique, and Javier Moro. Five Past Midnight in Bhopal: The Epic Story of World’s Deadliest Industrial Disaster. New York: Warner Books, 2003. Nathalie Cavasin
environmental problems From the 1950s, with the massive rise in the human population, the expansion of cities and towns, and the increasing use of natural resources, some scientists such as Rachel Carson have written about impending problems. However, most people only became aware of major environmental problems from the 1980s, with the environment becoming a major political issue from the 1990s. After World War II, the increasing use of pesticides in industrialized countries, especially the United States, led to Rachel Carson writing her book Silent Spring (1963), which highlighted the side effects of D.D.T. on the local environment. It led to the reduction in the amount of pesticides used, and this was followed by the
banning of D.D.T. in the United States in 1972. Other environmental campaigns saw protests against the killing of seals in Canada, and also against whaling mainly undertaken by the Japanese and the Norwegians. The International Whaling Commission introduced a moratorium on whaling in 1986, although Japan has continued to conduct whaling under the guise of science. International environmental organizations such as Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace have been prominent in leading protests around the world, the latter becoming famous for taking part in direct action. Developing environmental problems around the world have been added to by many natural occurrences such as hurricanes in the Caribbean, in the United States and elsewhere, floods in Florence and Venice in 1966, the eruption of volcanoes such as Mount St. Helens in 1980, and the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 26, 2004. In some cases there were a combination of other man-made environmental disasters that have involved feeding sheep and cattle with substandard “food.” The destruction of forests either for timber or to clear land for cash crops continues, as does the contamination of rivers and the countryside by waste from mines. Even natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina leading to flooding in New Orleans in August 2005 has sub sequently led to an environmental disaster by creating a toxic stew of sewage, household chemicals, gasoline, and industrial waste that will take years to clean up. In addition there have been a large number of manmade environmental problems. The one which has resulted in the largest number of deaths in the short-term was undoubtedly the Bhopal poison gas explosion in India on December 3, 1984. The biggest disaster on an international scale was the Chernobyl nuclear power station accident in the Soviet Union in 1986. Others have included the venting of oil into the Persian Gulf by Saddam Hussein in 1991, and also a large number of oil spills around the world created by damage to oil tankers and the like, the largest being that of the Exxon Valdez in Prince William Sound, Alaska, in March 1989. In the 2000s, the major environmental issue became that of global warming, especially after the screening of former u.s. vice president and Nobel laureate Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth. assault on forests The assault on the world’s forests are as old as humankind. Early people were quick to learn the many uses of wood: fuel for cooking, warmth, and the smelting of metals; materials for durable shelter; and a sign of fertile lands for the growing of crops. Wood was abundant in most places where early humans chose to settle. It was
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More and more carbon dioxide is being expelled into the atmosphere, creating a thick blanket of heat around the globe.
relatively easy to obtain and work with, and there was always more. Archaeologists are finding widespread evidence of wood-burning and log construction that began much earlier than anyone expected. Clearing of the land was rarely mentioned in the chronicles of the Western or Eastern world in the early modern period, but it seems obvious that as the population grew, the forests shrank. In central and northern Europe an estimated 70 percent of the land was covered by forest in 900 c.e.; by 1900 it had shrunk to only 25 percent. During this long period of growth and expansion, people learned how to fashion wood into sailing ships, opening up new sources of timber to exploit and new lands to settle. Clearing land in the tropics and subtropics helped the slave trade by creating vast plantations for the cultivation of sugar, coffee, tobacco, tea, rubber, rice, and indigo. The birth of the industrial age accelerated the onslaught. Trees could suddenly be turned into pulp for paper, wood for mass-produced furniture, plywood for lightweight construction, and countless other useful
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products. Rubber trees produced the raw materials for automobile tires and other items for a growing consumer marketplace. By the mid-20th century, the development of chainsaws and heavy machinery had made the clear-cutting of entire forests easier than ever before. Today, the clear-cutting of forests is driven by a need for both wood and cropland, as the swelling global population demands more and more food. Our evolutionary ancestors faced widespread shifts in the climate as glacial periods, referred to as “ice ages,” came and went every 100,000 years or so. The impact of those early ice ages on human development are difficult to judge; it is likely that some proto-human species adapted and others did not. Some scientists now believe that it was climate change that spurred the migration of humans out of Africa. The fossil record, incomplete as it is, shows that Homo sapiens had emerged between 150,000 and 120,000 years ago in southern and eastern Africa, yet it took another 100,000 years or more for them to move into Europe, Asia, and beyond. Ice core samples and excavation of ancient seabeds indicate that the climate in that part of Africa underwent significant changes between 70,000 and 80,000 years ago, with annual precipitation rates fluctuating wildly for a long period of time, putting a strain on the food chain and forcing humans to look for new habitats. There is some evidence that there was a major volcanic eruption at Mount Toba in modern Indonesia around 73,000 years ago, which could have caused most of the planet to suffer the effects of a “volcanic winter,” lasting up to seven years. Some believe this could have caused the mass extinction of proto-human groups outside Africa, reducing the competition when humans from Africa began moving into their territories. climate change In climatological terms, we are just coming out of the latest glacial period, known as the Little Ice Age. This period extended from between the 13th and 16th centuries to around 1850. In the Northern Hemisphere the period was marked by bitterly cold temperatures, heavy snowfalls, and the rapid advance of glaciers. Unseasonable cold spells and precipitation lead to periodic crop failures and famines. Most notable was the Great Famine, which struck large parts of Europe in 1315. Heavy rains began in the spring of that year and continued throughout the summer, rotting the crops in their fields and making it impossible to cure the hay used to feed livestock. This cycle of rainy summer seasons would continue for the next seven years.
Food scarcity hit Europe at the worst possible time: at the end of a long period known as the Medieval Warm Period, where good weather and good harvests had led to population growth that had already begun to push food supplies to the brink. Few seem to have died from outright starvation, but an estimated 15–25 percent of the population died from respiratory diseases such as bronchitis and pneumonia, the natural result of immune deficiency. The Great Famine had far-reaching effects on society. Crime increased along with food prices, with property crimes and murders becoming more common in the cities. There were stories of children being abandoned by parents unable to find food for them, and even rumors of cannibalism. This was during the height of the Catholic Church’s hegemony in Europe, and people naturally turned to the church in times of fear. When prayer failed, the church’s power was diminished. It was the beginning of a long drift towards the Protestant Reformation of the 16th–17th centuries. The Little Ice Age was releasing its grip in the early part of the 1800s when a massive volcanic eruption on Mount Tambora in present-day Indonesia ejected a huge amount of volcanic ash into the atmosphere. This ash cloud encircled the Northern Hemisphere over the next year or more, creating climatological havoc throughout Europe, the United States, and Canada. In May 1816 a killing frost destroyed newly planted crops. In June, New England and Quebec saw two major snowstorms, and ice was seen on rivers and lakes as far south as Pennsylvania. The crop failures that year led to food riots across Europe. Many historians believe that the summer of 1816 spurred the process of westward expansion in America, with many farmers leaving New England for western New York State and the Upper Midwest. At the beginning of the 21st century, signs of another great climate shift seem to be everywhere. Glaciers are receding at an unprecedented rate. Polar ice caps are shrinking. Sea levels are on the rise. Severe weather events, including droughts, heat waves, and hurricanes, are growing in length and intensity. Con troversy continues among academics and policy makers over the exact cause of the warm-up: Is it being caused by humans, or is it simply the latest in an long series of climate changes? There is some support for the idea that this is an inevitable rise in temperatures growing out of the end of the Little Ice Age in the mid-19th century, but the majority of scientists now believe that humans are playing a significant role in global warming. World population has reached 6 billion, all of whom consume and burn
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biomass to survive. Whether from industrial smokestacks, millions of car exhaust systems, or open fires used to cook food across the developing world, more and more CO2 is being expelled into the atmosphere, creating a thick blanket of heat around the globe. The threat to both the environment and human life cannot be underestimated. Up to a third of the world’s species may go extinct by the beginning of the next century. While northern climates may see an initial surge in crop yields, high temperatures and persistent droughts in the southern climates will reduce yields and increase the threat of widespread famines. Water scarcity will become severe. The latest projections indicate that by 2030, hundreds of millions of people in Latin America and Africa will face severe water shortages. By 2050 billions of Asians will also be running far short of their freshwater needs, with the Himalayan glaciers all but gone as early as 2035. By 2080 100 million people living on islands and coastlines will be forced to flee their homes. The struggle for an increasingly small share of food, water, and other natural materials could spark “resource wars” among nations. The possibility of reversing this trend is not clear, but many scientists believe we have reached the “tipping point,” making a full reversal unlikely. See also Kyoto Treaty. Further reading: Hardoy, Jorge E., Diana Mitlin, and David Satterthwaite, eds. Environmental Problems in Third World Cities. London: Earthscan, 1993; Sandler, Todd. Global Challenges: An Approach to Environmental, Political, and Economic Problems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Heather K. Michon
Equal Rights Amendment The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), first proposed in the U.S. Congress in 1923, guarantees the equality of rights for all people in the United States. The amendment has been pushed by women’s groups since 1920. Following the Great Depression and World War II, the rise of a second, more sweeping women’s rights movement led to reconsideration of an amendment to secure women the rights to equal wages and equal consideration under the law. The 1970s and 1980s saw the congressional approval of the amendment but the failure of enough states to ratify it into the Constitution. The failure of the ERA in 1982 was a step backward politically.
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Protesters against the Equal Rights Amendment were spurred on by the rise of the feminist movement.
The historical landmark for increased rights for women was the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, a clarion call by concerned females to the rest of the country for increased rights. The unity of the convention was quickly disturbed by the Civil War and the subsequent passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was meant to give rights and liberties to freed slaves. However, women’s groups argued over how loosely the amendment could be interpreted and whether such equality was given to black women if the Constitution did not include rights for white women. Legal interpretations of woman’s rights in the United States became more sophisticated in the early 20th century, as the Supreme Court saw fit to deal with issues of labor. In Lochner v. New York (1905), the Supreme Court ruled that the number of hours worked by women was not related to the maintenance of public health. In Muller v. Oregon (1908), however, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a 10-hour work day passed by the Oregon state legislature and aimed toward regulating industry in favor of employees. The first protests for suffrage began in front of the White House in January 1917, led by future members of the National Women’s Party (NWP), including equal rights advocate Alice Paul. Agitation by women dedicated to the cause of women’s suffrage, along with rights to fair wages, was successful, as the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920. Even with this success, a major rift developed between activists like Paul who sought quicker strides for women, and experienced professionals like Carrie Chapman Catt and Florence Kelly. Catt and Kelly feared the NWP’s agenda was too sweeping and harmful to progress already being
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made for women in the areas of judicial review and minimum-wage legislation. The 1920s–1930s saw several phases in the battle between the NWP and other women’s groups—including vacillation on whether an equal rights amendment would be effective, whether protective legislation for women should be incorporated with an amendment, and whether courts should be more active in providing equality for women. The NWP remained active not only in working for an amendment for equal rights but in creating a better work environment for women in the United States and expanding equal rights throughout the globe. However, the NWP was not successful in fulfilling many of its goals because of strong-arm tactics by more conservative groups in the United States, more conservative governments globally, and the devastation of the Great Depression. The idea of an equal rights amendment was not lost with the diminishing influence of the NWP. In every session of Congress between 1923 and the passage of the ERA in 1982, an amendment was introduced dealing with equal rights based on gender. The Republican Party included a fairly progressive plank in their 1940 platform. The U.S. Senate passed the Equal Rights Amendment three times—in 1949, 1953, and 1959—but each passage was marred by an irreconcilable rider exempting existing sex-specific legislation from the amendment. The period between the Great Depression and the rise of feminism was one of slow progress toward public acceptance of the ERA. The rise of a feminist movement in the 1960s was broad and rapidly well organized. The movement encompassed all aspects of female life in the United States. The expression of sexuality by women was made a topic of discussion after Betty Friedan’s Feminist Mystique was published in 1963. The creation of a marketable birth control pill in 1960 made a woman’s control over her own body an important aspect of public health. The establishment of the National Organization for Women in 1966 and its rapid acceptance among other lobbying groups gave the feminist movement a political organization that would be unrivaled within a few years. The Equal Rights Amendment was passed several times in the 1970s by the House of Representatives, but was not passed through to the ratification process. In August 1970 the House passed the ERA 35215, and in the fall of 1971, on the back of Representative Martha Griffins (D-MI), the House passed the ERA 354-23; it was moved further by congressional approval in 1972. It was not until 1982, however,
that the legislative approval of the ERA was followed up by the ratification process. The amendment failed when only 13 of the state legislatures ratified. One cause of trepidation by the public toward the amendment was the activism of antifeminists such as Phyllis Schlafly, who saw the amendment as an unnecessary exercise and a waste of energy for women. However, the amendment’s process and the rise of feminism and antifeminism have opened a dialogue for women’s issues and legal interpretations of equal rights in already existing amendments. See also Aung San Suu Kyi. Further reading: Becker, Susan. Origins of the Equal Rights Amendment: American Feminism between the Wars. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981; Berry, Mary Frances. Why ERA Failed: Politics, Women’s Rights, and the Amending Process of the Constitution. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986; Stakup, Brenda. The Women’s Rights Movement: Opposing Viewpoints. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 1996. Nicholas Katers
Eritrea Eritrea is an African country lying along the southwestern coast of the Red Sea and to the northeast of Ethiopia. Its capital and largest city is Asmara. Eritrea gained its independence from Ethiopia in 1993. The country’s diverse population speaks many languages and reflects many cultures. About half the inhabitants are Christian and about half are Muslims. In spite of this diversity, Eritrea has had little internal conflict in part because most factions were united in a struggle for independence from Ethiopia. The Eritrean region was one of the first areas in Africa to produce crops and domesticate animals. Early people also engaged in extensive trade from Eritrea’s Dead Sea ports. In the fourth century, Eritrea was a relatively independent part of the Askum Empire. In the 16th century the area became part of the Ottoman Empire, and in 1890 it became a colony of Italy. Italian rule lasted until World War II, when Britain conquered the territory in 1941. In 1952 the United Nations (UN) approved a federation of Eritrea and Ethiopia in an attempt to settle the dispute between Ethiopian claims of rights to the land and Eritrea’s desire for independence. Ethiopia’s emperor, Haile Selassie, quickly acted to end the federation and to annex Eritrea as a province.
Eritrea began a war for independence from its longlasting domination by other countries. The Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) was formed in 1958 and initiated armed resistance in 1961. The next three decades were filled with bitter warfare before Eritrea finally gained its independence in 1993. In the 1970s, due in part to the internal conflicts within the ELF, a new and more tightly organized group—the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (ELPF)—emerged. This group became dominant in the struggle against Ethiopian rule. The Soviet Union and Cuba came to the aid of Ethiopia’s new regime after Haile Selassie was deposed in 1974, but the alliance was unable to dominate the rural districts of Eritrea. By 1980 the ELPF was increasing its control over more areas of the province, and in 1990–91 it gained possession of two major cities, including the capital. At that point the ELPF was recognized as the provisional government by many other countries. Ethiopia and Eritrea agreed to hold a referendum on independence in 1993, which resulted in almost unanimous approval for the initiative. In May of 1993 the United Nations admitted Eritrea to membership and granted a four-year transitional period for the formation of a constitution. The ELPF dominated the early years of independence, and Isaias Afwerki—former general secretary of the ELPF—was elected the first president of the National Assembly. The constitution, formally approved in 1997 but not yet implemented, outlines a government directed by the National Assembly—whose members are elected for five-year terms—a president, and a supreme court. The president holds great power, since he appoints the members of the Supreme Court and the administrators of each of Eritrea’s six regions. The only legal political party is the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (formerly the ELPF). The National Assembly elections scheduled for 2001 were postponed indefinitely. Eritrea’s independence and democratic government have been threatened by a number of factors, including the government itself and the economic and physical damages of the long war for independence. During the 1970s–1980s, nature dealt Eritrea devastating blows in the form of droughts and famine. In addition, the government pursued policies that led to engagement in several wars. Eritrea fought the Sudanese on a number of occasions. Eritrean forces invaded the Red Sea island of Hanish al Kabir, a possession of Yemen, in 1995 and claimed ownership. Arbitration settled the dispute in Yemen’s favor in 1998. Conflict that led to thousands of deaths broke out again between Ethiopia and Eritrea in 1998 over disputed territory. In 2000 the
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two countries agreed to a cease-fire, but a formal agreement on the borders between them was not approved. A UN peacekeeping force located in Eritrea continued to patrol a 25-mile-wide Temporary Security Zone along the countries’ borders. With less than 5 percent of its land arable, Eritrea continues to face severe economic and ecological concerns arising from deforestation, soil erosion, overgrazing, and its decayed infrastructure. See also Ethiopia, Federal Democratic Republic of. Further reading: Jacquin-Berdal, Dominique, and Martin Plaut, eds. Unfinished Business: Ethiopia and Eritrea at War. Lawrenceville, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2004; Pateman, Roy. Eritrea: Even the Stones Are Burning. Lawrenceville, NJ: Red Sea Press, 1998. Jean Shepherd Hamm
Ethiopia, Federal Democratic Republic of The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia is situated in the east of Africa in the region known as the Horn of Africa. Its capital is Addis Ababa. This country is bound to the west and northwest by Sudan, to the south by Kenya, to the east and southeast by Somalia, and to the east by Djibouti and Eritrea. Ethiopia is 1,221,900 square kilometers in size. Its topography consists of rugged mountains and isolated valleys. It has four main geographic regions from west to east: the Ethiopian Plateau, the Great Rift Valley, the Somali Plateau, and the Ogaden Plateau. The diversity of Ethiopia’s terrain determines regional variations in climate. This country has three climatic zones: a very cool area, where temperatures range from near freezing to 16°C; a temperate zone; and a hot area, with both tropical and arid conditions, where temperatures range from 27°C to 50°C. The semiarid part of the region receives fewer than 500 millimeters of precipitation annually and is highly susceptible to drought. The most important current environmental issues are deforestation, overgrazing, soil erosion, desertification, and water-intensive farming and poor management that contribute to water shortages in some areas. Another problem that the country faces is the constant loss of biodiversity and the threat to the ecosystem and the environment. Ethiopia’s population is mainly rural and has a high annual growth rate. In 2004 the United Nations
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Three Ethiopian gunners from Addis Ababa preparing to fire a 75mm recoilless rifle. Modern Ethiopia has a long history of conflict with neighboring countries in the Nile River basin.
e stimated Ethiopia’s population at more than 70 million. There are more than 70 distinct ethnic groups in Ethiopia. The principal groups include the Oromo, who account for 40 percent of the population; the Amhara, 25 percent; and the Tigre, 12 percent. Smaller groups are the Gurage, 3.3 percent; the Ometo, 2.7 percent; the Sidamo, 2.4 percent; and other ethnic minorities. More than half of Ethiopians, 53 percent of the population, are Christians (Orthodox), and around 31 percent are Muslims; there are also other indigenous tribal beliefs. Ethiopia is one of Africa’s oldest countries. Although Ethiopia was considered a strategically important territory by superpowers during the colonial period, Ethiopia’s monarchy maintained its freedom. There were exceptions during the Italian invasion in 1895–96 and the occupation during World War II. During the cold
war era in 1974, a military junta deposed Emperor Haile Selassie and established a socialist state, which maintained a relationship with the Soviet Union. After long period of violence, massive refugee problems, famine, and economic collapse, the regime fell in 1991 to a coalition of rebel forces, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). In 1994 a new constitution was approved, and Ethiopia’s first multiparty elections were held in 1995. At the international level Ethiopia engaged in several disputes. Ethiopia-Eritrea Conflict In 1889 Ethiopia granted the control of its colony to Italy, but between 1941 and 1952 this country was put under British administration. An agreement was signed, and both countries formed a federation. However, 10
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years later Haile Selassie abolished it and imposed imperial rule throughout Eritrea, which became a province, causing a series of guerrilla attacks. In 1991 a provisional government was established in Eritrea, and it became an independent nation in 1993. But the border between Ethiopia and Eritrea was never precisely demarcated. So in 1998 Eritrean forces occupied the disputed Ethiopian town of Badme, and a new war began, lasting until 2000, when both countries signed a treaty. Despite an international commission that delimited the border, the relationship between them remains hostile. Ethiopia-Somalia Conflict Ethiopia has always sought access to the sea and looked to Somalia for the reunification of its territory. Somalia used to claim the Ogaden region, inhabited for the most part by Somali ethnic groups. During the conflict with Eritrea, Ethiopia controlled almost the whole region, with a consequent breaking off of diplomatic relations. In 1988, after 11 years of constant confrontation, Ethiopia removed the troops from the border with Somalia, reestablished diplomatic relations, and signed a peace treaty. But the central section of Ethiopia’s border with Somalia was never fully demarcated and is only provisional. Also, Ethiopia and Somalia have always had aspirations to control the territory of Djibouti. The Nile Basin Dispute The Nile River runs through nine states: Egypt, Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, Sudan, Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Congo. This river serves as a constant source of water for these countries. It has a vital role in agriculture and it also plays a major role in transportation. The river is born in Ethiopia’s territory, and Ethiopia controls 85 percent of its water, but Egypt is the country that makes the most profit from its water flow. This country, with its military superiority and economic and political stability, puts pressure on upstream countries. During recent years these countries have not been able to divert the water flow because of the constant tensions. Though the conflict is still between the main actors—Sudan, Egypt, and Ethiopia—it is probable that all the countries in the Nile basin will be affected while the population continues growing and water needs increase. Ethiopia’s economy is based on agriculture, and 90 percent of the products obtained are exported. The principal crops are cereals, pulses, oilseed, cotton, sugarcane, beans, and potatoes, but the most important is coffee. This sector suffers from frequent drought and poor cultivation practices. As a consequence the coun-
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try has to rely on massive food imports. Ethiopia does not have many mineral resources. It has small reserves of gold, platinum, copper, potash, and natural gas. For these resources Ethiopia depends on imports too. The leading manufactures in Ethiopia include cement, construction materials, food processing, and textiles. It has extensive hydropower potential. The transportation network is poor. During the 1990s Ethiopia abandoned its exclusive bilateral policy with the Soviet Union and began to acquire more freedom. It became a decentralized, market-oriented economy with privatization and the cooperation of international financing organs. Agreements were also made to form regional organizations. But participation in the world economy remained marginal, and dependence on international financing organisms increased Ethiopia’s external debt. In fact, in 2001 Ethiopia qualified for debt relief from the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative, and in 2005 the International Monetary Fund voted to forgive Ethiopia’s debt. Ethiopia is among the poorest countries in the world according to the Human Development Index established by the United Nations. About 50 percent of the population is below the poverty line. Food shortage in Ethiopia has reached alarming levels. The climate conditions, the lack of means to develop agriculture, displacements, refugees, and AIDS are factors that contribute to worsening the situation. Therefore foreign aid is constantly needed to prevent diseases and famine, particularly in times of drought. Further reading: Fage, J. D., and Roland Oliver, eds. The Cambridge History of Africa. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975–86; Keller, Edmond J. Revolutionary Ethiopia: From Empire to People’s Republic. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988; Klare, Michael T. Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict. New York: Henry Holt, 2001; Zewde, Bahru. A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855–1974. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1991. Verónica M. Ziliotto
European Economic Community/ Common Market The European Economic Community (EEC), also known as the Common Market, was established by the Treaty of Rome among France, Italy, West Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. It was the
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core of what would become the European Community in 1967 and the European Union after the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty (1992). The EEC aimed to create a single economy among its members. Its acts were devised to achieve free labor and capital mobility; the abolition of trusts; and the implementation of common policies on labor, welfare, agriculture, transport, and foreign trade. The idea of a united European market has its roots in the aftermath of World War II. After Europe had been divided and ravaged by two brutal world wars, politicians such as German chancellor Konrad Adenauer, Italian prime minister Alcide De Gasperi, and French foreign minister Robert Schuman agreed on the necessity of securing a lasting peace among previous enemies. They believed that European nations should cooperate as equals and should not humiliate one another. In 1950 Schuman proposed the creation of a European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), which was established the following year with the Treaty of Paris. France, Italy, West Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands consented to have their production of coal and steel monitored by a High Authority. This was a practical and a symbolic act at the same time: Steel and coal, the raw materials of war, became the tools for reconciliation and common growth. These first years of cooperation proved fruitful, and ECSC members started to plan an expansion of their mutual aid. Negotiations between the six countries making up the ECSC led to the Treaty of Rome (1957), which created the European Economic Community, a common market for a wide range of services and goods. The process of integration continued during the 1960s, with the lifting of trade barriers between the six nations and the establishment of common policies on agriculture and trade. Denmark, Ireland, and the United Kingdom joined the EEC. As the EEC grew, its leaders realized that European economies needed to be brought in line with one another. This persuasion, reached during the 1970s, was the starting point of the tortuous path that would finally lead to monetary union in 2002 with the circulation of the euro. To stabilize the fluctuations of European currencies caused by the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system, the European Monetary System (EMS) was created in 1979. The EMS helped to make exchange rates more stable and promoted tighter policies of economic solidarity and mutual aid between EEC members. It also encouraged them to monitor their economies. The monitoring of the members’ economies became vital during the 1980s, when membership in the EEC
rose to 12, with the entries of Greece in 1981 and Spain and Portugal in 1986. The first Integrated Mediterranean Programme (IMP) was launched with the aim of making structural economic reforms and thus reducing the gap among the economies of the 12 member states. With the enlargement of its membership the EEC also started to play a more relevant role on the international stage, signing treaties and conventions with African, Caribbean, and Pacific countries. The worldwide economic recession of the early 1980s seemed to endanger the process of market integration. However, the commission, led by the French socialist Jacques Delors, gave new impetus to European incorporation. It was under Delors’s leadership that the Single European Act, the first major revision of the Treaty of Rome, was signed, setting a precise schedule for the removal of all remaining barriers between member states by 1993. The Delors Commission also worked to create a single currency for the European Common Market. The single currency option was chosen with the creation of a Central European Bank aiming to unify monetary policies and create a common currency. The choice was made explicit in the Treaty of Maastricht (1992), which set up a timetable for the adoption of a single currency. With the Maastricht Treaty, the European Economic Community was simply renamed the European Community, and the process of European integration was completed with the creation of the EU. Austria, Finland, and Sweden joined the union in 1995. Ten more countries (Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia) joined in 2004, making the EU the world’s largest trading power. Bulgaria and Romania joined in 2007. In some countries the introduction of the euro was marked by controversies and heated debates. Yet economists have shown that the European Common Market has much to benefit from the euro. Frankel and Rose suggest that being part of a single currency tends to triple the country’s trade with other members of the singlecurrency zone, leading to increases in the country’s per capita income. Further reading: European Union, www.europa.eu; Mowat, R. C. Creating the European Community. London: Blanford Press, 1973; Sapir, A., and J. Alexis, eds. The European Internal Market. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989; Walsh, A. E., and J. Paxton. The Structure and Development of the Common Market. New York: Taplinger Publishing Company, 1968. Luca Prono
European Union The European Union (EU), founded with the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, represents a large project of economic and political integration between an evergrowing group of European countries. The EU quickly became the world’s major trading power and enjoyed fast economic growth. Free internal trade and common customs duties, which member countries enjoyed since the beginning of the union, led to significant trade development among the different members. The EU, by 2006, included 25 member states. Bulgaria and Romania became members in January 2007. Croatia and Turkey were negotiating their membership, which was prevented by concerns over human rights violations in both countries. Of the 25 members, 12 adopted a single currency—the euro—for financial transaction in 1999. The euro entered circulation in January 2002. As the union expanded, however, it increasingly found resistance and obstacles on its way. A powerful movement of Euro-skeptics emerged throughout the EU in the late 1990s, pointing to a supposed lack of democracy in the EU institutions and to the danger of losing national sovereignty to a centralized body. Some politicians in those countries with more developed economies looked upon the enlargement of the union with suspicion, fearing a wave of uncontrollable migration. These concerns led to several serious defeats: Referenda in Denmark and Sweden showed that the majority of citizens were against adopting the euro; French and Dutch voters rejected the European Constitution in 2005. Although the Maastricht Treaty was signed in 1992, the idea of a united Europe dates back to the aftermath of World War II. After two world wars had divided European countries and massacred their people, statesmen such as German chancellor Konrad Adenauer, Italian prime minister Alcide De Gasperi, and French foreign minister Robert Schuman agreed on the necessity of building a lasting peace between previous enemies. The cooperation between these countries led to the Treaty of Rome in 1957, which established the European Economic Community (EEC) and the first European Commission, led by the German Christian Democrat Walter Hallstein. Customs duties among member states were entirely removed from 1968, and common policies for trade and agriculture were also devised. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 progressively shifted eastern European countries toward the EU. The most important EU institutions include the Council of the European Union, the European Com-
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mission, the European Court of Justice, the European Central Bank, and the European Parliament. The origins of the European Parliament, which convenes in Strasbourg, date back to the 1950s. It has been elected since 1979 directly by the European people. Elections are held every five years. The European Central Bank manages the union’s single currency, and the EU has a common policy on agriculture, fisheries, and foreign affairs and security. Although the policies devised by the EU range across a wide variety of areas, not all have binding power for the union’s members. The EU status, therefore, varies accordingly to the matters discussed. The union has the character of a federation for monetary affairs; agricultural, trade, and environmental policy; and economic and social policy, while each member state retains wider independence for home and foreign affairs. Policy making in the EU results in an interplay of supranationalism and intergovernmentalism. Following the Maastricht Treaty, the areas of intervention of the EU can be divided into three pillars: European Communities, Common Foreign and Security Policy, and Police and Judicial Cooperation in Criminal Matters. Supranational concerns are strongest in the first pillar, while the Council of Europe and thus intergovernmental opinions count the most in the second and third pillars. The Council of the EU, together with the European Parliament, form the legislative branch of the union, while the European Commission represents its executive powers. The council is formed by ministers of all the member states. The presidency of the council rotates between the members, and the council is made up of nine subcommissions, which meet in Brussels. The European Commission, whose president is chosen by the Council of Europe and is then confirmed by the European Parliament, has 25 members, one for each member state. Yet, unlike the Council, the commission is completely independent from member states. Commissioners, therefore, are not supposed to take suggestions from the government of the country that appointed them. Their only goal should be to propose legislation to favor the development of the whole union. The major setback for the EU was the rejection of the constitution by two of its founding members, France and the Netherlands. Signed in 2004, the constitution—whose elaboration was particularly difficult and thorny—aimed to make human rights uniform throughout the union as well as to make decisionmaking more effective in an organization that now
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includes as many as 25 members, each with priorities and agendas of their own. The main challenge that the EU will have to face in years to come is, paradoxically, a direct result of its success and its capacity to attract new nations. With more member countries, the EU is threatened by increasing regional interests that endanger the deployment of shared policies.
Further reading: European Union, www.europa.eu; Karadeloglou, Pavlos, ed. Enlarging the EU. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002; McCormick, John. Understanding the European Union: A Concise Introduction. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999; Pinder, John. The European Union. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Luca Prono
F Falklands War (1982) The Falklands War was a short war between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), occurring between March and June of 1982. The Falklands consist of two large—and many small— islands in the South Atlantic Ocean east of Argentina, rich in subaquatic offshore oil reserves. Disputes over the sovereignty of the islands have occurred since the 18th century, as the islands are actually located within the Argentinean continental platform. However, in spite of many Argentinean claims, in 1833 British troops and inhabitants took possession of the islands. At the beginning of the 1980s Argentina’s military government had become less powerful. Argentina faced a devastating economic crisis and large-scale civil unrest, with many people clamoring for the return of democracy. As a way of recovering some power and maintaining the military dictatorship, the Argentine government—headed in 1982 by General Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri—decided to play off long-standing feelings of nationalism by launching what it thought would be a quick and easy war to reclaim the Falkland Islands. Most of Argentina’s military experts likely misjudged the political climate in Britain and did not anticipate that the British would move their fleet halfway across the globe to reclaim their rights over the islands. After days of tension, the war finally began on April 2, 1982, when General Galtieri ordered the invasion of the Falkland Islands, triggering the Falklands War. During the first weeks Argentina’s troops moved quickly,
invading the islands, defeating the improvised British troops, and gaining domain of the islands. Britain quickly organized a naval task force, consisting of the HMS Conqueror submarine, helicopters, Royal Air Force bombers and fighters, destroyers, and a large number of naval fighting boats. In comparison to Argentina’s task force technologically, in quantity, and in the areas of military professionalism and experience, British troops by far were better prepared than the Argentinean troops. Although there was a huge difference in military power between the two forces, the war lasted four months and resulted in 255 killed and 746 wounded on the British side and 655 killed, 1,100 wounded, and 11,313 prisoners on the Argentinean side. One of the war crimes most sadly remembered by the Argentineans was the sinking of the General Belgrano light cruiser. The cruiser was located in the “total exclusion zone” of 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) that had been established by the British before commencing operations in order to keep neutral shipping out of the way during the war. In spite of that, on May 2 the British HMS Conqueror submarine fired torpedoes, hit the boat, and sank it, taking the lives of 321 Argentinean soldiers. In response to that, the Argentine air force launched an air attack and sank the destroyer HMS Sheffield. As a result, 22 British sailors were killed and 24 were injured. Given the difference in military force between the sides, the war quickly turned in Britain’s (United Kingdom’s, or U.K.’s) favor. In addition to their military advantage, the U.K. government received strong international support from the United States, France, and Chile, among other countries. 147
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Legally the United States had military treaty obligations to both parties in the war, bound to the U.K. as a member of NATO and to Argentina by the 1947 Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (the Rio Pact). However, the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty only obliged the signatories to support if the attack occurred in Europe or North America above the tropic of Cancer. The Rio Pact obliged the United States to intervene if an adherent was attacked; the U.K. never attacked Argentina, only Argentine forces on British territory. French President François Mitterrand gave full support to the U.K. in the Falklands War. France provided the U.K. with aircraft, identical to the ones it had supplied to Argentina, for British pilots to train against and also provided intelligence to help sabotage the Exocet missiles it had sold to the Argentine air force. In Latin America, Argentina’s neighbor country Chile also gave its support to the U.K. by providing important logistical support during the war and strategic help by threatening an invasion on the west border of Argentina. Argentina’s only support was military assistance from Peru and Venezuela. This came in the form of critical aircraft supplies like long-range air fuel tanks. Cuba and Bolivia also offered ground troops, but their offers were seen as political propaganda and not accepted. Only after the war was over did the Brazilian air force send some reinforcements. The British eventually prevailed, and the islands remained under British control. On June 14, 1982, after the final battle in Port Stanley, the commander of the Argentine garrison in Stanley, Mario Menendez, surrendered to Major General Moore of the Royal Marines. From the British point of view, the Falklands War was one of many small military conflicts in which the U.K. has been engaged. For Argentina, the war remains the country’s main military conflict and is very much present in the people’s memory. As of 2006, Argentina still showed no sign of relinquishing its claim to the Falkland Islands. Further reading: Hastings, Max, and Simon Jenkins. The Battle for the Falklands. New York: Norton, 1983; Middlebrook, Martin. The Fight for the “Malvinas”: The Argentine Forces in the Falklands War. New York: Viking, 1989; West, Nigel. The Secret War for the Falklands: The SAS, MI6, and the War Whitehall Nearly Lost. London: Little, Brown, 1997; Woodward, Sandy, and Patrick Robinson. One Hundred Days: The Memoirs of the Falklands Battle Group Commander. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1992. Diego I. Murguía
Falun Gong Falun Gong is a system of meditation exercises, termed qigong, introduced by Li Hongzhi in 1992. Falun Gong, translated as Practice of the Wheel of Law, grew quickly after its public introduction and is also known as Falun Dafa. In 1999 the Chinese government suppressed Falun Gong in response to hugely growing numbers and large peaceful demonstrations by Falun Gong practitioners. In 1992 Li Hongzhi introduced Falun Gong at the Fifth Middle School in China. A system of qigong, Falun Gong is a cultivation practice associated with Buddhism. The foundation of Falun Gong is dharma, the doctrine and discipline of Buddhism. The Falun Gong core principles are truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. Qigong systems teach breathing techniques and meditation. In Falun Gong, practitioners are required to enforce strict meditation and must abide by truth, compassion, and endurance in all of their actions. Falun Gong, using evidence they believe does not fit into modern anthropology, teaches that humankind has endured several cycles of civilization. Its teachings emphasize not belief but rational understanding. To pray or hope for things is considered futile action. Lust, homosexuality, and other practices considered of low morals in Falun Gong are believed to hinder the cultivation process. According to its beliefs there are five important sets of exercises that include meditation: four standing exercises and one sitting exercise that strengthen the mind and the body. It also believes that karma is the cause of disease and that only by letting go of earthly attachments can one prevent and cure disease. Additionally, in Falun Gong the Wheel of Law (the Falun) must be installed in the abdomen through meditation. Once installed, this Falun turns continuously. By the late 1990s, Falun Gong, spread by the Internet, had gained followers all over the world. Controversy over its beliefs led to protests by believers in 1998, during which some practitioners were arrested. According to Falun Gong reports, the police beat some of the protesters. On July 20, 1999, the Chinese government began attempts to suppress the movement, concerned about its growth. Books and Web sites related to Falun Gong were suppressed, and the movement was declared illegal in China. However, the movement continues to claim followers in more than 80 countries, where governmental reactions range from acceptance to suspicion. One estimate projects their membership to be around 70 million people. Further reading: Adams, Ian, et al. Power of the Wheel: The Falun Gong Revolution. Toronto: Stoddart, 2001; Chang,
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Maria Hsia. Falun Gong: The End of Days. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004; Schechter, David. Falun Gong’s Challenge to China: Spiritual Practice or Evil Cult? New York: Akashic Books, 2000. Melissa Benne
Fanon, Frantz
(1925–1961) Third World spokesperson Frantz Fanon, born of the descendants of African slaves, was raised on the French Caribbean island of Martinique; he was French-educated and became a practicing psychiatrist as well as an influential writer and spokesperson for Third World revolutions during the 1950s–1960s. Fanon influenced an entire generation of revolutionary activists in Africa and in the Civil Rights movement in the United States. Influenced by Aimé Césaire and the ideas of Negritude, Fanon championed the cause of black liberation movements and, in his books and essays, explored the interrelationship of racism and colonialism. Fanon worked with the French resistance against the Nazis in World War II and went to Algeria as doctor at a hospital at Blida in the early 1950s. After the Algerian revolution broke out in 1954, Fanon quit to join the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) and became a leading spokesperson for the cause of Algerian independence from the French. His books, Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and Wretched of the Earth, published posthumously in 1961, became “handbooks of black revolution.” Fanon argued that violence was an integral part of the struggles for Third World independence because imperial colonial powers would never willingly cede their control over people of color. Fanon died of leukemia in Washington, D.C., in 1961 and was returned to be buried on Algerian soil. Further reading: Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove Press, 1952; ———. Wretched of the Earth. London: Macgibbon & Kee, 1965; Haddour, Azzedine, ed. The Fanon Reader. London: Pluto Press, 2003. Janice J. Terry
feminism, worldwide The phenomenon of feminism worldwide in the latter part of the 20th century reflects the diversity of social
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and cultural theories, political movements, and moral and religious philosophies shaped by the experiences of women. There is no universally accepted form of feminism that represents all of its advocates, but its representatives share a similar vision. Feminist theory continues to question basic assumptions about gender and sexuality, including the understanding of what it means to be a woman. Feminist scholars and activists seek clarity about feminine consciousness, the identity of women, their values, and their ambitions. They address the issue of oppression by men as an issue of power, dominion, and hierarchy. Feminists believe this oppression exists in relation to the identity of women and the challenges they have to face in local and global contexts. By the mid-20th century the feminist movement had brought about positive transformation and advances for women. Historically, feminism began as a women’s movement that originated at the Seneca Falls Convention (1848) held in New York State. This first wave of feminism formally ended in 1920 with the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which secured the right to vote for women. Ironically, the values of the early feminist movement have been so ingrained in Western culture that society generally accepts them, even though individuals who agree with those values may not accept being labeled “feminist.” feminism, second wave In the late 1960s, after 40 years consumed by economic depression, world war, and cold war fears, women again revisited issues of gender equality, launching a movement that came to be called Second Wave Feminism. Looking beyond the right to vote, many women in the industrialized world, joined by some women from developing nations, asserted new rights and demanded liberation from stereotypical female roles. A precursor of the post-suffrage women’s movement appeared in 1949, when French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir (1908–86) published The Second Sex, a major analysis of women’s lives and roles. Extremely controversial—the book was forbidden to Roman Catholics—de Beauvoir’s insights had little immediate effect on Western women, many of whom had embraced child rearing and homemaking in the prosperous years following World War II. By the 1960s a growing racial Civil Rights movement and rising opposition to Soviet and U.S. cold war policies were sparking protests in Europe and the Americas. In this climate journalist Betty Friedan’s 1963 analysis, The Feminine Mystique, was a huge best seller. Pointing to educated, middle-class women’s
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Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique, a book that helped spark the Second Wave women’s movement.
dissatisfaction with their “perfect” lives, Friedan (1921–2006) not only posed a “problem that has no name” but also helped found the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966 to deal with it. Canada’s National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) followed in 1971. The movement quickly took on a life of its own, as women in many nations found new ways to understand and advance their social, economic, and political rights. Asserting that “the personal is political,” movement women discussed issues long considered private, such as motherhood, divorce, abortion, rape, lesbian relationships, prostitution, and the sexual double standard. In 1976 de Beauvoir keynoted a huge International Women’s Day rally in Brussels that criticized the timidity of United Nations efforts for women. The same year 100,000 Italian women held the first “Take Back the Night” march to spotlight male violence against women. first women Around the world, female political leaders began to emerge in far greater numbers than ever before. Legisla-
tive bodies in Scandinavia and other western European nations saw near-parity in their sex ratios. In 1984 Geraldine Ferraro (1935– ) became the first woman chosen for vice president by a major U.S. party (the ticket lost) and in 2007 Nancy Pelosi (1940– ) of California became the United States’ first female Speaker of the House of Representatives. Nations including Britain, India, and Pakistan have been governed by women, although critics say that the feminist movement had little to do with their success. As was true during the original suffrage movement, not all women (or men) were comfortable with Second Wave Feminism’s new issues and styles of protest. Competing efforts to define the contours of women’s equality versus women’s differences from men continue to create controversy, as does the relevance of feminism in the lives of poor women, women of color, and women living in traditional societies—especially in Africa and the Islamic world. As an example, in the United States Alice Paul’s Equal Rights Amendment of 1923 was reclaimed by new feminist leaders and became the centerpiece of a broad spectrum of women’s rights initiatives. In 1972 this measure, promising “equal rights under the law” for women, easily cleared Congress and was sent to the states for ratification. Religious conservatives, led by mother and lawyer Phyllis Schlafly (1924– ), were able to raise enough opposition to halt the ERA three states short of passage. Schlafly and her supporters feared that traditional wives and mothers would be devalued and could lose legal protections. Claims by some opponents that the ERA would require that public toilets be available to both sexes helped reduce a spirited political controversy to farce. Other feminist proposals proved more successful. Title IX, a 1972 federal program to afford equal opportunities to high school and college women—although still controversial—greatly expanded women’s college enrollments and participation in competitive sports. Legislation and market forces combined to narrow the “pay gap” between men and women. Modern contraception—the “pill”—was approved for sale in the United States in 1960; birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger (1870–1966) helped finance its development. In 1965 a Supreme Court decision in Griswold v. Connecticut struck down a law that had prohibited contraceptive use even by married couples. By 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court’s narrow decision in Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in the first three months of pregnancy. Continuing bitter controversy over Roe highlights some general problems that, depending on one’s view,
have either hampered the modern women’s movement or kept it within reasonable bounds. In the United States, Canada, and elsewhere, anti-abortion protests have tended to increase restrictions and have sometimes made safe, legal abortion unavailable, especially to the poor and rural. Nations emerging from communism, including Russia, where abortion was freely allowed after 1955, have tended to tighten formerly liberal abortion and contraception alternatives. The same middle-class women whom Friedan urged to shed the bondage of woman’s “separate sphere” have struggled with demanding full-time jobs paired with fulltime home responsibilities, although European nations have traditionally offered generous maternity and childcare benefits. Help-wanted ads no longer separate male and female opportunities. However, women who have surged into law, medicine, science, the military, and other nontraditional jobs have experienced pay gaps, sexual harassment, and the so-called glass ceiling, which is said to limit women’s ultimate success. By the early 21st century, especially among the Second Wave’s second and third generations, a “mommy track”—giving up an unfulfilling job for motherhood—has emerged as at least a temporary alternative. Critics point out that the mommy track offers little help or economic advancement to working-class mothers. third-wave feminism Recently Third-Wave feminists have been identified, although the Second-Wave feminists assert that the work of the Second Wave is by no means complete. Women who were born in the 1960s–1970s felt that their personal experience set them apart from older leaders of the feminist movement. Third-Wave feminists of this period, having inherited a feminist tradition from the First and Second waves, strove to form their own distinct identity as feminists, naming and seeking to correct perceived inadequacies and contradictions of their predecessors. Hazel Carby, a representative of the Third Wave of feminism, identified a problem with the Second Wave. She believed that the Second Wave overlooked the experiences of black women by emphasizing the experiences of patriarchy and oppression endured by white women. She concluded that theories of patriarchal oppression studied in the 1970s and early 1980s overlooked the negative influences that slavery, colonialism, and imperialism had on women, and sought to raise awareness about these issues through her writings. Many, but not all, figures within feminism worldwide have been women. Feminists argue that men
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should not be leaders within feminist organizations because they have been conditioned to seek leadership aggressively. Similarly, those critical of accepting men in the movement believe that women have been socialized to defer to men, which may hinder their asserting their own leadership when working alongside men. Even so, some feminists believe men should be accepted within the movement because the virtue of equality should serve to promote inclusion and acceptance. The feminist movement has been influenced by and has shaped the study of culture. Since the late 1970s feminist cultural studies have expanded the study of women and established gender as an important criteria of analysis within broader cultural studies. Feminist cultural studies serve to answer questions about the influences of present cultural systems and their oppression of women and what can be done to combat patriarchy and oppression. Feminist cultural scholars, by observing the everyday lives of women, learn about their daily experience, how they cope with it, and how they are challenged by systems of inequality and oppression. Essentially all cultural objects, writings, and practices constitute the subject of cultural studies, and thus the subjects of feminist cultural studies are likewise as diverse. Areas that are studied within feminist cultural studies include advertising, art, being a housewife, class, colonialism, materialism, movies, pornography, postcolonialism, shopping, soap operas, and youth subcultures. In the 1980s cultural feminists used the mass media in their analysis of culture. Feminist cultural scholars believe that an analysis of mass media gives insight into the dynamics of society and politics. Feminists who study the influence of mass media on culture seek answers to the questions of how women may relate to and be affected by the mass media and how oppressive patriarchal ideologies may be throughout all forms of mass media. Studies argue that women who engage in watching television dramas and reading romance novels actively judge implicit patriarchal messages found within them. After the late 1980s, the feminist movement was influenced by post-structuralism. Post-structuralist feminists seek to understand and value feminine subjectivity and the implications of the power of written discourse for women. Some writings argue that the term and meaning of woman itself results from male-dominated discourse. Through uncritical use of the word, it loses its value in trying to shape and transform feminist thinking. These writings have caused feminists to insist that feminist cultural studies have lost track of the real material lives of women.
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The feminist movement has had an effect on written and spoken language in the latter part of the 20th century. English-speaking feminists have advocated using nonsexist language, for example, Ms. instead of Mrs. or Miss and herstory for history. Many feminists advocate using gender-inclusive language, such as humanity in place of mankind or he or she or just she instead of he when the gender of a subject is unknown. Many non-English languages do not have gendered pronouns and thus do not require gender-inclusive language. The increasing popularity, however, of using English in the world gives feminists reason to promote gender inclusivity in language. The influence of feminism in the late-20th century created distinctive ways of developing ethics. Feminist ethics attempt to investigate and rethink traditional Western ethics that do not take into account the moral experiences of women, in order to form a critique of traditional ethical theories formed by a male-dominated culture. The aim of the different forms of feminist ethics possesses a liberating aspect, based on moral theory founded in nonsexist methodology. Late 20th-century feminist thought has also influenced the movement toward equality in Islamic countries. Grounded in Islamic thought, Islamic feminists seek full equality of men and women in both the public and personal sphere. Among the issues addressed are the female dress code in Muslim society, sexuality, and the legal discrimination against women. A variety of women-centered approaches to feminist ethics have been developed, including feminine, lesbian, maternal, political, and theological. These approaches seek to provide guidelines for undermining the systematic subordination of women. The different forms of feminism that exist worldwide in the late-20th and early-21st centuries are manifold. They include African-American, Amazon, anarcha-feminism, black, cultural, ecofeminism, egalitarian, equity, existentialist, French, gender, gynocentric, individualist, lesbian and lesbian separatism, liberal, male pro-feminism, material, non-Western, postcolonial, postmodern, pro-sex, psychoanalytic, queer theory, radical, segregationalist, Socialist, spiritual, standpoint, theological, third-world, transfeminism, transnational, and womanist. Further reading: Antrobus, Peggy. The Global Women’s Movement: Origins, Issues and Strategies, Global Issues. London: Zed Books, 2004; Hendershott, Ann. The Politics of Abortion. New York: Encounter Books, 2006; McCann, Carole R., and Seung-Kyung Kim, eds. Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives. New York: Routledge,
2003; Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. New Delhi: Zubaan, 2003; Narayan, Uma. Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions, and Third-World Feminism. New York: Routledge, 1997; Rosen, Ruth. The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America. New York: Viking, 2000. Marsha Ackermann and Christopher M. Cook
Fonseca Amador, Carlos
(1936–1976) Nicaraguan revolutionary The intellectual guiding light of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, or FSLN) from its founding in 1961–62 until his death in battle in 1976, Carlos Fonseca Amador ranks among the most influential figures in modern Nicaraguan history, and one of the era’s most prominent Latin American revolutionaries. As an adult who was tall, slender, severely nearsighted, and self-abnegating, he was born out of wedlock as Carlos Alberto Fonseca on June 23, 1936, in the provincial city of Matagalpa, Nicaragua, to seamstress and laundress Augustina Fonseca Ubeda. His biological father, Fausto Amador Alemán, was one of the region’s wealthiest and most prominent coffee growers and businessmen. Growing up in the abject poverty characteristic of the city’s working class, at age 14 Carlos entered Matagalpa’s only public secondary school, the only one among five maternal siblings to go beyond primary school. A gifted student, he read voraciously, and at age 18 became active in the local branch of the banned Nicaraguan Communist Party (PSN). In the same year he copublished a cultural journal, Segovia, in which he developed many of the themes that would later play a major role in his political thought. Graduating from high school in 1955, he was honored for finishing all five years as first in his class. Moving to Managua, he worked in the library of the prestigious Instituto Ramírez Goyena high school before settling in León and enrolling in the National University of Nicaragua (UNAN) as a law student, where he became involved in radical student politics. Arrested by the regime of Luis Somoza following the assassination of Somoza’s father, Anastasio Somoza, in September 1956, Fonseca was jailed for seven weeks. In 1957 he embarked on a PSN-sponsored trip to Moscow as the Nicaraguan delegate to the Sixth World Congress of Students and Youth for Peace and Friendship. The
Ford, Gerald
next year he published Un Nicaragüense en Moscú (A Nicaraguan in Moscow) and became one of UNAN’s top student leaders. With the triumph of the Cuban revolution in January 1959, he traveled to Cuba, along with many other Nicaraguan dissidents. Upon his return, in April he was arrested and deported to Guatemala. From there he joined a newly formed guerrilla group training in Honduras. On June 24, 1959, he was severely wounded in a firefight with the Honduran military and Nicaraguan National Guard at El Chapparal. The event was a turning point. He broke with the PSN and, determined to forge an independent revolutionary movement modeled on Fidel Castro’s 26th of July Movement, he returned to Cuba and began a serious study of Nicaraguan rebel leader Augusto C. Sandino. In 1961–62 Fonseca and several comrades formed the FSLN, though the idea of using Sandino’s name and image was Fonseca’s. He interpreted Sandino as a kind of “path” that, through the FSLN vanguard, would combine Marxist theories of class struggle with Nicaragua’s unique history and culture of popular resistance. Henceforth Fonseca was the group’s undisputed leader. Organizing relentlessly and writing prolifically, for the next 15 years Fonseca guided the group through many hardships and phases. He was killed in a National Guard ambush on November 7, 1976, in the mountains northeast of Matagalpa, nearly three years before FSLN overthrew Somoza. Further reading: Borge, Tomás. The Patient Impatience: From Boyhood to Guerrilla: A Personal Narrative of Nicaragua’s Struggle for Liberation. Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press, 1992; Fonseca, Carlos. Obras: Bajo la bandera del sandinismo. Managua: Editorial Nueva Nicaragua, 1985; Zimmermann, Matilde. Sandinista: Carlos Fonseca and the Nicaraguan Revolution. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000.
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A college football player, graduate of Yale Law School, and navy officer during World War II, Ford became an active Republican after the war and was elected to the House of Representatives in 1948 on an internationalist platform that meshed well with the recent creation of the United Nations. He served as a representative for 24 years, proposing no major legislation and focusing instead on negotiating between and supporting the legislation of others. As a member of the Warren Commission appointed to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, he altered the Commission’s findings to misreport the location of one of Kennedy’s wounds in order to support the single bullet theory—tampering that was not revealed until 1997. In 1973, while Ford was House minority leader, Nixon’s vice president Spiro Agnew resigned in the middle of the Watergate scandal. The Speaker of the House and other congressional leaders made it clear to Nixon that they would accept only the mild, moderate Ford as Agnew’s replacement. He was confirmed at the end of the year and became president when Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974. One month later, Ford pardoned Nixon preemptively for any crimes committed against the nation during his presidency. The pardon brought great criticism upon Ford: Some accused him of pardoning Nixon in exchange for the resignation that made him president, others thought it was simply terrible judgment. Many agreed that it discouraged the pursuit of charges against Nixon, hampering the Watergate investigation; Ford’s supporters have pointed to a 1915 Supreme Court decision that established that for the accused to accept a pardon, he must
Michael J. Schroeder
Ford, Gerald
(1913–2006) U.S. president Gerald Ford was the president of the United States from 1974 to 1977, following a vice presidency of about eight months. He is perhaps best known as the successor to disgraced president Richard Nixon, whom he pardoned, and as the American president during the fall of Saigon.
President Gerald Ford (left) and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger converse on the grounds of the White House in 1974.
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accept his guilt. Thus, pardoning Nixon found the former president guilty in the process. In September 1975 two assassination attempts were made on Ford, the first by Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a troubled young follower of Charles Manson. Secret Service agent Larry Buendorf managed to block the hammer of Fromme’s handgun with his thumb, preventing her from firing. Later in the month, 45-year-old bookkeeper Sara Jane Moore shot at Ford during his visit to San Francisco, but failed because of the intervention of bystander Billy Sipple, a former marine and Vietnam veteran who soon became a gay hero when he came out of the closet. Moore’s motivations are unclear, but she spoke of wanting to “create chaos.” Ford was upfront about the odd start to his presidency and referred to himself as an “unelected” president. The vice presidency was filled by Nelson Rockefeller, the popular and well-connected New York governor whose presidential bids had repeatedly failed. Rockefeller’s replacement when Ford ran in the 1976 election was Bob Dole, who would later be known for his own run of failed presidential campaigns. After narrowly beating Governor Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination, Ford lost the election to Jimmy Carter. In 1980 he rejected Reagan’s offer to make him his running mate when Reagan refused to consider a “copresidency” in which Ford’s power would be increased beyond ordinary vice presidential duties. As an ex-president, he spoke in favor of election reform and gay rights and condemned the war in Iraq. He died the day after Christmas, 2006, at the age of 93—the longest-lived American president. Further reading: Casserly, John J. The Ford White House: Diary of a Speechwriter. Denver: Colorado University Press, 1977; Ford, Gerald R. A Time to Heal: The Autobiography of Gerald Ford. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1979; Greene, John Robert. The Presidency of Gerald R. Ford. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1995; Mieczkowski, Yanek. Gerald Ford and the Challenges of the 1970s. Lexington: Kentucky University Press, 2005. Bill Kte’pi
Free Speech Movement The Free Speech Movement (FSM) began in 1964 at the University of California, in Berkeley. It was the catalyst for student protest in the United States and in the world during the 1960s–1970s. The movement began
as a protest by students, teaching assistants, and faculty against the university’s ban on political activities and sought to establish the right to state political views on campus. The size of the incoming freshman class at Berkeley grew by 37 percent between 1963–64. Humanities and social majors had risen from 36 to 50 percent in the previous decade. The new students were more socially conscious than their predecessors. The president of the University of California system, Clark Kerr, anticipated the influx, but failed to anticipate that the old in loco parentis philosophy was impractical in the face of student restlessness and activism. The student left wing began emerging in the late 1950s as the anticommunist fervor of the McCarthy era eased. Some of its leaders were the children of liberal and radical professionals. The student party at Berkeley, SLATE, wanted to end nuclear testing, capital punishment, and the cold war. In 1957 it began running slates of candidates in student elections, and it included civil rights as one of its issues. Berkeley students in 1960 protested the San Francisco hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), to radicals the most blatant symbol of the 1950s suppression of civil liberties. Police turned fire hoses on the protesters and arrested many of them. The HUAC produced a film, Operation Abolition, that attempted to portray the protesters as subversives, but the movie backfired—it was so poorly done that it supported the liberal case against the committee. It later became a cult classic on campuses. Mario Savio, the son of a Roman Catholic machinist, entered this climate. Savio spent the 1964 summer teaching at a freedom school in McComb, Mississippi. After returning to Berkeley in September 1964, he learned that the traditional venue for protest, the Bancroft strip of Telegraph Avenue just outside Berkeley’s main gate, was off limits for the handing out of pamphlets, petitions, and recruitment because it had been the scene of demonstrations by students against local businesses that discriminated. The conservative regents pressed the administration into closing the campus and adjacent areas to recruiting and agitation. The students reacted angrily. SLATE, anti-HUAC groups, civil rights activists, and ordinary students— even some conservative ones—protested the closure. On September 29, they set up tables on the Bancroft strip and refused an order to leave. On September 30, the university officials began taking names. When five protesters were ordered to appear before disciplinary hearings, 500, led by Mario Savio, marched on the
administration building. The marchers demanded that they be punished too. The administrators added the three leaders of the march to the five and suspended all eight. The next day, students received handbills declaring that a fight for speech was under way. Student tables in front of Sproul Hall included representatives from the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Du Bois Club, the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and half a dozen others. When asked to identify himself, Jack Weinberg at the CORE table refused. When campus police attempted to arrest him, Weinberg went limp in the classic civil disobedience manner. For 32 hours the police car containing Weinberg and the police was unable to move. Finally Kerr and the student representatives compromised. Weinberg was released, the academic senate committee examined the question of suspensions, and the big issue of appropriate political behavior on campus was given to a faculty-studentadministrator committee. That took care of the incident. It did nothing to stop the rebellion. prior restraint The FSM wanted an absolute First Amendment freedom of political activity. When the senate committee announced a compromise, Savio denounced it as prior restraint. On November 9 Savio and his allies put up the tables even though the administration opposed them. The administration did nothing, leading many undergraduates to conclude that the administration was picking and choosing, taking on the FSM because it was weak. The undergraduates shifted support back to the FSM. The faculty senate committee issued its findings on November 13. Six of the eight were to be reinstated, but Savio and Art Goldberg were to be on suspension for six weeks—retroactive to the incident more than six weeks in the past. The regents increased the penalties for Savio and Goldberg. FSM became stronger as the semester ended. On December 2, in another protest of university action against the FSM, the graduate students went on strike. Four to five thousand heard Savio speak against the grinding of the machine and about the need to resist, and 1,000 to 1,500 students occupied the administration building. Under the authority of Governor Pat Brown, 600 state and county police cordoned off Sproul Hall, and the chancellor ordered the students to leave. Clearing the building of limp protesters took 12 hours. All 773 arrested for trespassing were out on bail the next day. The strikers were well organized, and with the support of faculty sympathizers turned out thousands of flyers. Most teaching assistants and faculty cancelled
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classes. Kerr cancelled Monday classes to allow for a meeting where all could hear about his facultyapproved “new era of freedom under law.” When the meeting ended, Savio attempted to speak, but two campus guards dragged him from the stage. To the FSM supporters, it was a blatant denial of free speech. The crowd demanded that Savio be allowed to speak; he announced a rally at Sproul Plaza. old system The academic senate meeting on the following day was the largest in memory. Several thousand students outside heard the proceedings over loudspeakers. The senate’s academic freedom committee endorsed all FSM demands, leaving the administration only the power to prevent physical disruption. Conservatives attempted to establish limits, but the proposals passed 824 to 115. Shortly thereafter the FSM ended the strike. The next day SLATE won every student government office. On December 18 the regents refused to accept the faculty committee’s recommendations. The University of California’s board of regents resisted the pressure initially, but it slowly retreated until, on January 2, 1965, the new acting chancellor, Martin Meyerson, ceded most of the FSM’s basic demands. The regents reinstated the rights of students to set up tables on campus, especially in Sproul Plaza, and to collect money through donations. They could also distribute literature and recruit members. Protests and marches for religious, social, and political causes were once again permitted. The Berkeley Free Speech Movement was the prototype of the new campus liberalism. It altered the American campus for the foreseeable future. Traditional controls and curricula were gone, and students enjoyed the free exchange of ideas and freedom in general. The Berkeley FSM was but the first round in the generational clash of the 1960s–1970s. It brought to students the tactics of the Civil Rights movement, tools the students would use in protesting the war in Vietnam. Veterans of the 1960s protests would turn into leaders of the women’s rights movement, and both conservatism and liberalism would change. Ronald Reagan would emerge from political obscurity on the issue of opposition to all that the FSM represented. See also McCarthyism; Vietnam War. Further reading: Cohen, Robert, and Reginald E. Zelnick, eds. The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. John H. Barnhill
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FRELIMO
FRELIMO FRELIMO, founded in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on June 25, 1962, is the result of a merger among three regionally based nationalist organizations—the Mozambican African National Union, the National Democratic Union of Mozambique, and the National African Union of Independent Mozambique. Eduardo Mondlane, its first president, settled its headquarters in 1963 outside of Mozambique in Dar es Salaam. His group was founded on the ideals of liberation from Portugal’s colonial power. He was assassinated in 1969 by Portuguese forces. By 1964 FRELIMO controlled most of the northern regions of Mozambique. The war waged against the Portuguese, concurrent with the anticolonial wars in Angola and Guinea-Bissau, drew heavy economic losses for Portugal. The resulting depression in Portugal contributed to the end of fascism in the home country and aided the victory of FRELIMO over the colonial forces. Portugal and FRELIMO negotiated Mozambique’s independence, but FRELIMO’s victory in 1975 also delivered a completely bankrupt nation. FRELIMO established a one-party state based on Marxist principles, with Samora Machel as the first president of the newly independent nation. Its Marxist and communist roots provided Mozambique with diplomatic and some military support from Cuba and the Soviet Union. The new FRELIMO government went on to fight a civil war with RENAMO—a South African– and Rhodesian-sponsored political faction. This conflict did not see a resolution until the Rome General Peace Accords were signed in 1992. Mozambique, as inherited by FRELIMO, was rife with poverty and illiteracy. The Portuguese colonists had prohibited elementary education to the indigenous
population, and upon fleeing the Portuguese dug up roadways, destroyed electrical and plumbing infrastructure, killed livestock, smashed equipment, and left the national treasury empty. In March 1976 FRELIMO closed its borders to Rhodesia. The price of this solidarity was $600 million in lost Rhodesian revenue and punitive sanctions imposed by apartheid South Africa on independent Mozambique. Rhodesia, backed by South Africa, waged war against Mozambique and FRELIMO with increasingly harsh raids into Mozambique’s central provinces. Yet despite the continuation of war, FRELIMO, with overwhelming popular support, was able to cultivate outstanding economic growth in Mozambique by 1979. Mass literacy campaigns quickly nullified centuries of deprivation, and FRELIMO’s healthcare policies were soon lauded worldwide as an ideal for developing nations. With Machel’s death in 1986, Joaquim Chissano began to lead both FRELIMO and Mozambique. Despite his education in the communist bloc countries, Chissano was not a hard-line Marxist and called for democratic, multiparty elections in 1994 that put an end to single-party rule. Chissano stepped down, and Armando Emilio Guebuza took over as leader of FRELIMO and Mozambique in 2005. Further reading: Bowen, Merle L. The State against the Peasantry: Rural Struggles in Colonial and Post-Colonial Mozambique. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2000; Finnegan, William. Complicated War: The Harrowing of Mozambique. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004; Hall, Margaret, and Tom Young. Confronting Leviathan: Mozambique since Independence. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997. Rian Wall
G Gaitán, Jorge Eliécer
(1903–1948) Colombian politician and reformer Remembered mainly for the tragic manner of his death and the convulsions of violence sparked by his assassination on April 9, 1948—an event precipitating an explosion of popular outrage in Bogotá (the Bogotazo), and soon after, La Violencia (The Violence), which wracked Colombia through the 1950s and after—Jorge Eliécer Gaitán was born to a poor family on January 23, 1903. Entering school for the first time at age 11, and graduating from law school in 1924, Gaitán became a professor at the National University of Colombia and in 1926 earned his doctorate in jurisprudence at the Royal University of Rome. Politically active from 1919 in the Colombian Liberal Party, in 1933 he broke with the Liberals to found the Revolutionary Leftist National Union (Unión Nacional Izquierdista Revolucionaria, or UNIR). His rise to prominence rested on his keen political skills, gifted oratory, populist message, and capacity to make that message resonate among ordinary people—especially workers and the poor. His discourse was filled with references to “the people,” a source of moral good, in contradistinction to “the oligarchy,” a force of evil, corruption, and oppression. Denouncing poverty, inequality, exploitation, and oppression, he advocated economic justice and reconfiguring the nation’s political life. In 1935 he rejoined the Liberal Party, and in 1936 became mayor of Bogotá, an office he filled for eight months. In 1940 he was named minister of education,
and from 1943 to 1944 served as labor minister. In 1945 he was nominated as the Liberal Party’s candidate in the May 1946 presidential elections, but was defeated at the polls due to a Liberal split, coming in third after Conservative Mariano Ospina Pérez, who triumphed, and the runner-up, Liberal Gabriel Turbay. Named Liberal Party chief in 1947, he was widely considered the favorite for the 1950 presidential elections. His assassin, Juan Roa Sierra, was killed by rioters moments after Gaitán’s death, leading to much speculation about who was behind the assassination. Gaitán’s daughter, Gloria Gaitán, 11 years old at the time of her father’s death, later implicated the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and its Operation Pantomime. No definitive evidence has surfaced to prove the allegation, which is nonetheless consistent with the broader U.S. cold war effort in the postwar years to stem populist leftist movements in Latin America and elsewhere. The assassination took place during the Ninth Pan-American Conference in Bogotá, and its Latin American Youth Conference, attended by Gaitán supporter Fidel Castro of Cuba, among others. See also Colombia, La Violencia in (1946–1966). Further reading: Bergquist, Charles, Ricardo Peñaranda, and Gonzalo Sánchez, eds. Violence in Colombia: The Contemporary Crisis in Historical Perspective. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1992; Braun, Herbert. The Assassination of Gaitán: Public Life and Urban Violence in Colombia. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985. Michael J. Schroeder
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Gandhi, Indira
(1917–1984) Indian prime minister Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi (November 19, 1917–October 31, 1984) was the third (1966–77) and sixth (1980– 84) prime minister of India and the first woman to hold that office. Her legacy is very complex. Gandhi was the daughter of the first prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964). She was a member of the Indian National Congress, a nationalist organization established during British rule in 1885. In the 1930s Gandhi began the Vanara Sena, a movement that consisted of young people who participated in marches and protests to support the independence movement and also distributed nationalist propaganda and illegal materials. While attending Oxford University, Gandhi met a young Parsee activist and Congress Party member, Feroze Gandhi (1912–60). The two eventually returned to India and were married in 1942. They had two sons, Rajiv (1944–91) and Sanjay (1946–80). Shortly after their marriage she and Feroze joined Mohandas Gandhi’s (1869–1948) nonviolent action against the British, which landed them in jail. Shortly after independence Gandhi moved to Delhi to aid her father, and Feroze accepted a position in Allahabad as a writer for a Congress Party newspaper. During India’s first election, Gandhi worked as campaign manager for both her father and her husband. Nehru won the election and became the first prime minister of India; Feroze won a seat in Parliament. Friction between Nehru and Feroze Gandhi caused the couple’s official separation. Feroze Gandhi suffered a heart attack in 1957 and after a brief reconciliation with Indira and their two sons, died in 1960. Gandhi’s political career took off. She was elected president of the Congress Party in 1960 and subsequently became Nehru’s chief of staff and major political adviser. After her father’s death in 1964, India’s second prime minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri, appointed her minister for information and broadcasting in his cabinet. In this position she became a very popular figure, as she traveled to many non-Hindi-speaking regions and calmed rising violence against the imposing of Hindi as India’s national language. She also gained popularity when she refused to leave volatile border regions where she was vacationing when the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 broke out. After Prime Minister Shastri died, Gandhi won the election and become the third prime minister. She immediately began successful programs to aid farmers in the production of staple foods.
Indira Gandhi was the third prime minister of India following independence and the first woman to hold the office.
In 1971 she met her first major crisis when East Pakistan declared independence. Events culminated in another Indo-Pakistani War in 1971. India’s intervention led to the defeat of Pakistani forces and independence for Bangladesh. India detonated a nuclear device and joined the nuclear club in 1974 under her leadership. The Congress Party, however, suffered schism. One reason was her shifting of power away from the individual states to the central government. She was accused of fraud and was found guilty. Her sentence was removal from office and prohibition from running in elections for six years, which she appealed, thus remaining in office until the appeal could be heard. She then countered the advice of President Fakhuruddin Ali Ahmed to declare a state of emergency that would give the prime minister and her government unchecked power. On June 26, 1975, the emergency proclamation was ratified by Parliament. Elections were postponed. The emergency government she led
Gandhi, Rajiv, and Sonia S.
had unlimited power of detention and censorship and persecuted many members of opposing parties. However, the economy flourished, and violence decreased. The emergency ended in 1977, possibly because she believed in her popularity. She called for elections, was beaten handily by the Janata Party, and stepped down. Her measures in imposing and leading the government during the emergency split the Congress with an offshoot wing called Congress-I supporting her. The Janata government immediately sought to prosecute the former prime minister for her illegal acts. It reviewed, and the president called for, new elections in 1980, in which the Congress-I won a landslide victory. Gandhi’s final term as prime minister had to deal with challenges from the Sikh Akal Takht extremist movement, which sought autonomy for Punjab, a state with a Sikh majority. Gandhi countered by ordering the Indian army to raid the Golden Temple in Amritsar, a site holy to Sikhism. The raid resulted in an uproar among the Sikh minority. Two of Gandhi’s Sikh bodyguards assassinated her on October 31, 1984. See also Gandhi, Rajiv, and Sonia S. Further reading: Dua, Bhagwan D. “Federalism or Patrimonialism: The Making and Unmaking of Chief Ministers in India.” Asian Survey 25, no. 8 (August 1985); Hardgrave, Robert L. “India in 1984: Confrontation, Assassination, and Succession.” Asian Survey 25, no. 8 (February 1985); Jayakar, Pupul. Indira Gandhi: An Intimate Biography. New York: Pantheon Books, 1992; Klieman, Aaron S. “Indira’s India Democracy and Crisis Government.” Political Science Quarterly 9, no. 2 (Summer 1981); Malhotra, Inder. Indira Gandhi: A Personal and Political Biography. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1989; Paul, Swraj. Indira Gandhi. London: Royce, 1985. Caleb Simmons
Gandhi, Rajiv, and Sonia S.
(1944–1991 and 1946– ) Indian politicians Rajiv Ratna Gandhi was the seventh prime minister of India, following in the footsteps of both his grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) and his mother, Indira Gandhi (1917–84). After finishing high school in India, Rajiv, like most children of prominent Indian families, went to England for further education. He attended Imperial
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College London and Cambridge University. At Cambridge Rajiv met Sonia Maino, an Italian student, and despite opposition from her family she moved to India and the two were married in 1968. Rajiv and Sonia had two children, Rahul and Priyanka. Rajiv initially showed no interest in politics. He worked as an airline pilot for Indian Airlines. However, after the death of his brother, Sanjay (1946–80), Rajiv was persuaded to enter politics by his mother. He was criticized for his lack of experience and viewed as merely a successor of a Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. In 1981, Rajiv won the Parliament seat vacated by his brother and became a top adviser to Indira. He became the leader of the Congress Party’s youth movement, the Youth Congress, and won popularity as a young progressive leader. After Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984, President Zail Singh dissolved Parliament, and new elections were held. Rajiv was named president of the Congress Party, which won a landslide, and Rajiv assumed the role of prime minister of India. Immediately after taking office Rajiv began changing foreign policy to strengthen relations with the United States and distance India from the Soviet Union. He also began to reform governmental quotas, tariffs, taxes, and educational spending policies, extending the opportunity to receive an education to lower-class citizens. Rajiv also promoted human rights and peace within India and abroad. His policies reconciled disaffected Sikhs in Punjab. He also sent an arbitration and peacekeeping corps to Sri Lanka to mediate between the government and rebels called the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). After a treaty was signed, conflict broke out between the Indian forces and the rebels over disarmament. Many Indian soldiers were killed, forcing Rajiv to withdraw his forces. Rajiv’s image was further tarnished by a scandal involving foreign defense contracts that paid highranking Indian officials. He lost the following election. Rajiv, however, remained the president of the Congress Party and the leader of the opposition. On May 21, 1991, he was assassinated by a suicide bomber from Sri Lanka opposed to his interventions in her country, while he was campaigning for reelection. His death once again united the Congress Party, which regained a majority in Parliament. Sonia, his widow, was urged to enter politics and assume the seat vacated by her husband. She refused and remained outside of the political arena until shortly before the 1998 elections. She then announced her candidacy for a seat in Parliament, and later she also won the presidency of
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the Congress Party, now in opposition. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) governed India to 2004. In the 2004 elections the Congress Party once again won a majority. She was unanimously elected as the new prime minister of India but declined due to the controversy surrounding her foreign birth. She in turn appointed former economist Manmohan Singh, the former finance minister, as the first Sikh prime minister of India. See also Tamil Tigers. Further reading: Chaterjee, Rupa. Sonia Gandhi: The Lady in the Shadows. Dehli: Butala Press, 1999; Hardgrave, Robert L. “India in 1984: Confrontation, Assassination, and Succession.” Asian Survey 25, no. 2 (February 1985); Mehta, Ved. Rajiv Gandhi and Rama’s Kingdom. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994; Nugent, Nicholas. Rajiv Gandhi: Son of a Dynasty. London: BBC Books, 1990; Thakur, Ramesh. “A Changing of the Guard in India.” Asian Survey 38, no. 6 (June 1998); Sanghvi, Vijay. Congress Resurgence Under Sonia Gandhi. Delhi: Kalpaz Publications, 2004. Caleb Simmons
Gang of Four and Jiang Qing The epithet “Gang of Four” was Mao Zedong’s (Mao Tse-tung) name for his wife, Jiang Qing, and her three lieutenants, Yao Wenyuan (Yao Wen-yuan), Zhang Chunqiao (Chang Ch’un-ch’iao), and Wang Hongwen (Wang Hung-wen) in 1976; the four rose to power during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966–76). Jiang had hoped to succeed her husband as leader of the Chinese Communist Party when he died, with the assistance of her three confederates. Instead, they fell from power within a month of his death, were tried for high crimes in 1980, and were convicted. Jiang Qing (1913–91) was an actress in Shanghai before she went to Yan’an (Yenan). She became Mao’s secretary, then his wife, over the objection of his colleagues, who reputedly made him promise to keep her out of politics for at least 20 years. Largely sidelined from running the party since 1960 as a result of the failed Great Leap Forward, Mao promoted her to great prominence in 1966 to help him recapture power. Together they unleashed the Cultural Revolution and empowered the youthful Red Guards to inflict a reign of terror that eliminated Mao’s enemies. Jiang Qing took control of the media and banned all entertainment except for the eight “model operas” that she authorized.
However, before his death in September 1976, Mao appointed Hua Guofeng (Hua Kuo-feng), minister of public security and acting premier, to be his successor. Jiang then planned to mount a coup and assassinate the senior party leaders with the aid of her lieutenants and the militia, which was loyal to them. But they were preempted by Hua, who had the support of the senior party and military leaders. Hua invited the Gang of Four to attend an emergency meeting of the Politburo (the supreme council of the Communist Party) at its headquarters at midnight on October 5. Zhang, Wang, and Yao fell into the trap and were arrested as they arrived for the meeting; Jiang was captured while still in bed. None of their supporters rose to their aid. This event was called the Smashing of the Gang of Four. Nevertheless it took four years before the Gang of Four was brought to trial for crimes they had committed against the state and people because of the difficulty of assessing Mao’s role in what transpired during the Cultural Revolution. In November 1980 a special court charged them with framing and persecuting party and government leaders, torturing and killing more than 34,750 people, and plotting an armed uprising in Shanghai after Mao’s death. Although the others admitted guilt, Jiang remained defiant, claiming that she had acted as Mao’s dog, doing his bidding. The trial lasted two months and resulted in death sentences for Jiang and Zhang, with a two-year suspended execution. Wang was sentenced to life and Yao received 20 years. Some sources say that Jiang committed suicide in jail in 1991. Wang died in 1992, Zhang died in 2005, and Yao died in 2006. See also Deng Xiaoping. Further reading: Terrill, Ross. Madame Mao: The White Boned Demon. Rev. ed. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999; Witke, Roxane. Comrade Chiang Ch’ing. Boston: Little, Brown, 1977. Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur
Gaulle, Charles de
(1890–1970) French president Charles de Gaulle represented French strength and resilience throughout his career, first as an officer during World War I and the interwar period, then as leader of the Free French government abroad during World War II, and finally as the president of the republic during an era characterized by prosperity and foreign policy
challenges. His determination to defend France’s independence and freedom of action earned him both plaudits and criticism. His social and cultural conservatism frustrated French youths of the late 1960s, although his supporters appreciated his respect for tradition. De Gaulle received a solid, humanist education at Catholic-run schools. His father, Henri, was a teacher of history and letters. Having decided not to continue in his father’s footsteps, De Gaulle entered the military academy of Saint-Cyr in 1908. He joined the infantry because it would be exposed to direct fire in wartime. He served as a student officer under Colonel Philippe Pétain. Following graduation from Saint-Cyr in 1912, de Gaulle chose to join Pétain’s 33rd Infantry Regiment from Arras. Lieutenant de Gaulle received several wounds during World War I, though he returned to combat as soon as he recovered from them. He became a colonel before he received a third, nearly fatal wound during the battle of Verdun in 1916. Left for dead, he became a prisoner of war under German supervision. He attempted escape five times without success. After armistice he briefly returned to France before being posted to Poland. He helped to organize an army to fight against the Soviet Red Army. He spent the years after his 1921 marriage to Yvonne Vendroux in France. In 1931 he joined the general secretariat of National Defense in Paris, where he became involved in politics for the first time. He also commenced writing and theorizing about warfare during the interwar period. He published several articles that attracted attention due to his unorthodox claims; de Gaulle recommended that commanders adapt to the particular features of their situation. In a series of lectures at the Ecole Supérieure de Guerre, under Pétain, he considered possible reforms of the military. De Gaulle advocated the creation of a corps that combined firepower and mobility in the interest of rapid, daring offensives. After France declared war against Germany in September 1939, de Gaulle became commander of the 5th Army. After the French troops had been pushed back and many evacuated from Dunkirk, de Gaulle left for London with his aide-de-camp, Geoffroy de Courcel. He expected that the French government would continue the war from abroad. In response to Pétain’s announcement of armistice with Germany, General de Gaulle made his first appeal for continued resistance. Relatively few in France heard the initial message; the next day, however, the press promulgated de Gaulle’s call to arms. In succeeding days, de Gaulle repeated his rejection of the armistice and of Pétain’s government.
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De Gaulle organized the Free French Forces and, with the help of French jurist René Cassin, ensured that they would retain their national identity and enjoy a special status when fighting amoung British soldiers. The Free French soldiers would assist the Allies during the campaigns in North Africa, Italy, and France. De Gaulle established a series of committees designed to give structure to the Free French. The French National Committee, created in September 1941, began as the focal point for the government in exile. Soon after de Gaulle settled in Algiers he organized the French Committee for National Liberation, on June 3, 1943. He helped to coordinate the resistance within France by deputizing Jean Moulin to lead the National Council for the Resistance. De Gaulle disagreed with the new Constituent Assembly, chosen through elections held in October 1945, about the form of the new French state, so he resigned on January 20, 1946. On April 14, 1947, de Gaulle launched the Rassemblement du Peuple Français (RPF), which he intended as a “gathering” of loyal Frenchmen who opposed the weak executive and sweeping social legislation planned by the government of the Fourth Republic. In practice, the RPF served as a political party akin to the others. The RPF enjoyed local electoral success but had little effect on national politics given their small numbers in the National Assembly. The RPF staged a resurgence in 1958 when de Gaulle returned to the fore after years in the political “desert.” Between 1955 and 1958 de Gaulle relaxed at his estate at Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises. He remained attuned to current events, especially to the crisis of the Fourth Republic as it confronted the independence movement in Algeria that began with a November 1, 1954, insurrection. Some influential people called for de Gaulle to take control as a means of preventing civil war. On May 19, 1958, de Gaulle expressed his willingness to lead the republic, though he had no intention of staging a coup. On May 29 then-president René Coty called upon de Gaulle to form a government. The National Assembly accepted his presidency on June 1; he received the power to rule by decree for a six-month period and to introduce constitutional reforms. The constitution approved on September 29, 1958, brought the Fifth Republic into existence and provided for a strong executive and an influential parliament. De Gaulle received a large plurality in presidential elections and assumed the powers given to the president under the new constitution on January 8, 1959. As president of France, de Gaulle intended to resolve the Algerian crisis, to direct France’s relations with her
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European neighbors, and to ensure her independence relative to the United States. He traveled to Algeria on numerous occasions, finally concluding that France had to give the colony its independence. Negotiations proved difficult, given multiple factions in Algeria and the failed putsch staged by French generals in April 1961. After almost a year of talks the Évian Accords were signed on March 22, 1962, and then accepted by the French and the Algerians through referenda. De Gaulle made important contributions to the formation of a united Europe, though he never accepted the need for France to surrender any sovereignty in the process of building the European Union. He adhered to the requirements instituted by the Treaty of Rome, signed just prior to his arrival in office, by initiating financial reforms and by reducing customs duties and tariffs imposed on trade with other European countries. He pursued cordial relations with Germany; German chancellor Konrad Adenauer and de Gaulle signed the Elysée Treaty on January 22, 1965. De Gaulle also directed his attention to ensuring French national independence during the cold war. Although always opposed to communism and a sup-
The head of the Free French during World War II, Charles de Gaulle (right) led France through the postwar period.
porter of capitalism, as made evident by his immediate encouragement of American president John F. Kennedy during the Berlin crisis (1961) and the Cuban missile crisis (1962), he nonetheless believed it important for France to retain a “free hand” in the world. In his quest to preserve France’s international stature de Gaulle continued the nuclear program started after World War II; France exploded its first atomic bomb in the Sahara in February 1960. De Gaulle gradually pulled France out of the NATO military command, though the country remained part of the alliance even after 1966. De Gaulle further demonstrated his determination to maintain an autonomous foreign policy by his decision to recognize the People’s Republic of China in 1964. He criticized the U.S. war in Vietnam during a 1966 speech in Cambodia. He justified his encouragement of Québecois independence activists as being in line with his lifelong opposition to imperialism and his belief in the right to national self-determination. On the other hand, he developed amicable relations with the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellite states. Despite hesitations and almost no campaigning, de Gaulle won reelection to the presidency over François Mitterrand in 1965. Yet trouble was on the horizon. Although his tenure was generally a time of economic prosperity and modernization, many citizens chafed at the lack of social and cultural modernization. The events of May 1968, when students and labor union members engaged in protests and strikes, posed a problem for de Gaulle. Much to the public’s consternation he disappeared from France by helicopter on May 29. After returning from an evening in Baden Baden, where he consulted with a French general, he gave a radio address in which he stressed the need to remain intransigent about the necessity of public order. The legislative campaigns that followed de Gaulle’s dissolution of the assembly did little to eliminate the social fissures that had been revealed and exacerbated by the events of May 1968. The president became more cut off from the citizenry, while the new assembly refused necessary reforms. Ignoring his advisers, de Gaulle put planned reforms of the Senate to referendum in 1969. French voters responded negatively. He immediately announced his resignation and returned to his estate. In the year prior to his death he wrote his Mémoirs d’espoir (only the first volume of which was completed) and received visitors at his estate. De Gaulle was buried in the local church according to his instructions. See also Algerian revolution.
gay liberation movements
Further reading: De Gaulle, Charles. The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1964; De Gaulle, Charles. Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavor. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971; Lacouture, Jean. De Gaulle: The Rebel, 1890–1944. Translated by Patrick O’Brian. New York: W.W. Norton, 1990; Lacouture, Jean. De Gaulle: The Ruler, 1945–1970. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: W.W. Norton, 1992. Melanie A. Bailey
gay liberation movements The birthplace of the modern gay liberation movement in the United States is usually considered to be the Stonewall Inn, where riots took place in June 1969 in New York City. The Stonewall Riots and the social movement they engendered were influential in many countries. Stonewall did not occur in a vacuum, and there were social movements advocating gay liberation in the United States and elsewhere long before 1969. Although gay and lesbian communities thrived in certain cities early in the 20th century in the United States, the fact that same-sex behavior was both illegal and widely considered immoral made it difficult for gay people to organize. The Society for Human Rights, founded by Henry Gerber in Chicago in 1924, was shut down by the police a few months into its existence. Several longer-lasting organizations were founded after World War II, including the Mattachine Society in Los Angeles in 1951 (for men); ONE, Inc., in Los Angeles in 1952 (for men and women); and The Daughters of Bilitis in 1955 in San Francisco (for women). These organizations were more conservative than the post-Stonewall gay liberation organizations, and often stressed how similar homosexuals were to heterosexuals and advocated “blending in” to the dominant culture. The Stonewall Riots took place in Greenwich Village on the weekend of June 27–29, 1969. Not coincidentally, Judy Garland, an icon of the gay community, died on June 27, 1969. Although eyewitness accounts of the actual events of the Stonewall Riots differ, all agree that the precipitating event was a police raid in the early morning of June 28 on the Stonewall Inn, a bar on Christopher Street frequented by members of the gay community. Patrons of gay bars were used to police raids; normally the patrons would peacefully allow themselves to be arrested, but on June 28 they decided to fight back. The situation quickly turned into
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a brawl outside the bar. Passersby joined in the action, people began throwing stones and bottles, and eventually the outnumbered police had to take refuge in the bar. A riot-control unit was summoned, and the crowd was dispersed, but on the evening of June 28 another large crowd gathered outside the Stonewall, and there were more confrontations with the police into the early morning of June 29. A change of spirit was noted in the gay community, as gay people realized that they did not need to accept second-class status and that they had sufficient strength in numbers to resist harassment from the police or anyone else. The first modern gay liberation organization, the Gay Liberation Front (GLF), was formed a month after Stonewall. It was modeled more on other radical social organizations of the 1960s such as the Black Panthers. The GLF’s agenda was radical: They believed a societal transformation was necessary to ensure the rights of gay and lesbian people, and they also opposed racism, sexism, and militarism. Many other gay liberation groups were formed in the following years. The success of these organizations in winning full civil rights for gay people was uneven and varied within the United States. The word homosexual first appeared in a German pamphlet published in 1869, and Germany was the home of many pioneer theorists of gay liberation as well as the first gay liberation movement of the modern era. Leaders included Adolf Brand (1874–1995), publisher of the first homosexual literary journal, Der Eigene; Magnus Hirschfeld (1868–1935), the most prominent leader of the early German gay liberation movement; and Kurt Hiller (1885–1972). Although same-sex activities were technically illegal in both Germany and Austria, in fact the laws were frequently ignored, and a thriving homosexual subculture existed in major cities. This period of freedom came to a halt with the rise of National Socialism. More than 100,000 homosexuals were arrested during the Nazi years, many serving time in prison or concentration camps. Gay and lesbian activism revived in the 1970s in Germany and Austria, and in 2006 both countries recognized same-sex civil unions. The Netherlands was also a leader in gay liberation: The country legalized same-sex behavior among adults in the 19th century. In the 1970s many gay and lesbian groups formed, and most forms of discrimination against gay people were abolished. In 2001 the Netherlands became the first country to recognize same-sex marriage, including the right to adopt children. Many western European countries had gay liberation movements similar to those in the United
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States in the 1960s and 1970s, as did countries with a predominantly European culture such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In many ways, gay men and lesbians in these countries had more rights than they did in the United States. Most European countries have decriminalized homosexual behavior and have outlawed discrimination against homosexuals. Belgium and Spain became the second and third countries to recognize same-sex marriage, in 2003 and 2005, respectively, and many other countries recognize same-sex civil unions, including Portugal, France, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Finland, Hungary, Croatia, and Denmark. The idea of gay liberation and antigay prejudice became more prominent with the onset of AIDS. Originally, AIDS was referred to as gay-related immune deficiency (GRID) until it became evident that the disease was not limited to the homosexual community. For many, AIDS was seen as divine retribution against the homosexual lifestyle; others saw the disease as a justification for antigay discrimination. It is difficult to generalize about gay liberation in non-Western countries. In some countries the history of rights for gay people is similar to that of western Europe. In general, greater prosperity may be associated with greater personal freedom, but this is not always the case. For instance, Singapore, which has one of the highest standards of living in the world, outlaws homosexual behavior between men. Japan, an equally industrialized country, has a history of tolerance of homosexual behavior; gay organizations within that country have been oriented more toward entertainment and culture than political reform. In Turkey, a country that in 2006 hoped to become a member of the European Union, same-sex behavior is not technically illegal but gay people are often harassed by the police. This combination makes the formation of a gay liberation movement difficult, but two Turkish gay liberation organizations were founded in the 1990s: Lambda Istanbul (for men and women) and Sappho (for women). Further reading: Blasius, Mark, and Shane Phelan, eds. We Are Everywhere: A Historical Sourcebook of Gay and Lesbian Politics. New York: Routledge, 1997; Carter, David. Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2004; Drucker, Peter, ed. Different Rainbows. London: Gay Men’s Press, 2000; International Lesbian and Gay Association. World Legal Survey. http:// www.ilga.info/Information/Legal_survey/ilga_world_legal_ survey%20introduction.htm (cited June 2006); Vaid, Urvi-
shi. Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Lesbian and Gay Liberation. New York: Anchor Books, 1995. Sarah Boslaugh
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was an international agreement, originally between 23 nation-states, resulting from meetings held in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1947. Its goal was to promote global trade through a reduction in tariff barriers and other obstacles to the free flow of goods and services. Born at the dawn of the cold war (1947–91) and shaped most by the commercial and security concerns of the United States and western Europe, GATT was the principal international agreement governing commercial and tariff policies until its subsumption by the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995. GATT was originally conceived as the International Trade Organization (ITO), which would complement the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, both founded at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference. Because the U.S. Senate refused to ratify the ITO charter, President Harry S. Truman issued an executive order making the United States a signatory to GATT. Although GATT had no enforcement mechanism to ensure compliance by signatory states, it survived principally through its members’ voluntary adherence to its provisions, and fears of trade retaliation if they did not. Neither an international body nor a formal treaty, GATT was renegotiated many times, in a series of “rounds” named after the cities or countries in which the meetings took place, or after a country’s leader—for example, the Geneva Round (1955–56); the Kennedy Round, held in Geneva and named after U.S. President John F. Kennedy (1964–67); the Tokyo Round (1973–79); and the Uruguay Round (1986–93). Among the most important aspects of the resulting agreements concerned the principle of “most favored nation status,” or nondiscrimination, in which no signatory could discriminate against another without discriminating against all. Typically, the supplier(s) of a particular commodity negotiated with the consumer(s) of that commodity regarding tariffs, regulatory quotas, and related issues. Once an agreement was reached, it became part of GATT, shared by all member nations. As a result, average world tariffs on industrial commodities declined to 13 percent by the mid-1960s.
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Critics charged that GATT systematically favored the world’s most advanced industrial countries and locked the producers of primary export products into a permanent subordinate status within the global economic system. Pointing to the historical example of the United States, in which tariffs were routinely used to promote domestic industries, opponents of GATT accused it of perpetuating global economic inequalities and undermining the principle of national sovereignty. GATT’s defenders countered that tariffs and quotas constituted unfair trading practices, and that free trade agreements in general increased the world’s wealth by increasing trade and encouraging individual countries to leverage their comparative economic advantages. GATT’s successor, the WTO, a permanent body of the United Nations, which in 2007 had 145 members, does have enforcement mechanisms. Critics denounce the WTO as a tool of wealthy multinational corporations. Its defenders regard it as essential in ensuring the free flow of goods, services, and ideas. Debates regarding the efficacy and ethics of GATT and the WTO will likely remain heated.
flict. The division, formally made in 1949, lasted until reunification on October 3, 1990. The three western zones fused together as the Federal Republic of Germany, a nation reconstituted as a parliamentary democracy; the Soviet zone became the German Democratic Republic, with a communist-dominated government. Initially, the Allies endeavored to administer their zones by developing interzonal policies, through the auspices of the Allied Control Council. As part of their reparations the Soviets began to strip their zone of foodstuffs, livestock, transportation networks, and even entire factories. A major breaking point occurred in early 1948 as the three Western Allies—joined by Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg—called for the western zones of occupation to be eligible for Marshall Plan aid from the United States. This paved the way for a proposal to fuse the three western zones together economically and to introduce a common currency, the deutschmark, in May 1948. The former Allies were now clearly on opposite sides of a new war, and former enemies, the Germans, had become the respective allies of the two hostile superpowers.
Further reading: Debroy, Bibek. Beyond the Uruguay Round: The Indian Perspective on GATT. New Delhi: Sage, 1996; Hockin, Thomas A. The American Nightmare: Trade Politics after Seattle. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2001; Sandbrook, Richard, ed. Civilizing Globalization: A Survival Guide. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003.
legacy of the third recih Each of these new German nations had to grapple with the legacy of the Third Reich as they wrote new constitutions, revised legal codes, rebuilt their devastated economies, and struggled to find a new identity. A first step in the process was for occupation authorities to allow the revival or creation of political parties. Occupation authorities first encouraged politics to resume at the local and regional levels, while the question of national unity remained uncertain. By 1947 each of the regions, or Länder, in the western zones of occupation was led by a minister president, who was chosen by directly elected parliamentary assemblies. A similar process emerged in the Soviet zone, but with much less freedom of choice. It was apparent that the four occupation zones would not be unified as one political entity. The Western powers began to take steps toward encouraging the fusing of their zones, politically as well as economically. They authorized the West Germans to hold a constitutional assembly, draft a constitution, and secure its ratification by the state parliaments. This assembly convened in September 1948 and worked for nine months, compromising over issues such as the balance between state and federal powers. West Germany ratified its constitution in May 1949, held its first nationwide elections in August 1949, and narrowly chose Konrad Adenauer as its first chancellor.
Michael J. Schroeder
Germany (post–World War II) At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the leaders Winston Churchill of Great Britain, Franklin Roosevelt of the United States, and Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union agreed that Germany would be divided into four zones of occupation following its military defeat. The three countries and the French would each control one zone. In addition the capital city of Berlin, which lay within the Soviet zone, would also be divided into four sectors, one for each ally. The political leaders did not anticipate that these occupation zones would lead to a formal division of Germany into two separate nations. But in the context of growing tensions between Western and Eastern Allies, which laid the basis for the cold war, Germany became the primary battleground in a new kind of war, one of ideology rather than direct con-
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In the Soviet zone, the process of encouraging German-style socialism was abandoned in the Soviet drive to secure compliance from its satellite states by 1947. In its stead, political parties on the Left called a People’s Congress into session at the end of 1947. By October 1948 this congress of about 2,000 delegates had written and approved a constitution for what would become East Germany. On October 7, 1949, the Congress voted unanimously to form the German Democratic Republic. Economic rebuilding in West Germany received an enormous boost from the United States through Marshall Plan aid. This led to the German Economic Miracle; by the mid-1950s the West German economy was robust. The volume of foreign trade tripled between 1954 and 1964, while unemployment dropped from between 8 and 9 percent in 1952 to less than 1 percent by 1961. In 1957 Germany joined with five other western European nations (France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Italy) in the European Economic Community (EEC). The EEC created a common market, which allowed for the free movement of goods and people, facilitated stronger economic growth in a collective sense, and eliminated taxes and tariffs among its members. Amid considerable internal controversy and over strong French protest, West Germany also rearmed itself and joined NATO in 1955. East Germany’s economy was closely tied to that of the Soviet Union, as it instituted centralized economic planning, reduced private ownership of property, and seized and either collectivized or redistributed farmlands. In 1950 it joined Comecon, and in 1955, the Warsaw Pact. Relations between the East Germans and the Soviets were strained during the first decade of West German existence, exacerbated by the Soviets’ stripping of the eastern zone in the immediate aftermath of the war; the brutal treatment of German civilians, particularly women, at the hands of the Soviet military; and the economic hardships created by the transition to state-centralized economic planning. It also led to a serious drain of workers; by 1952 more than 700,000 East Germans had fled to the West. Tensions between West and East Germany increased again in the late 1950s, sparked by the steady stream of young, productive, educated workers from East Germany to West Germany. In the summer of 1961, by which time more than 3 million East Germans had fled to the west since 1949, Nikita Khrushchev, premier of the Soviet Union, spoke out against the infiltration of Western saboteurs and imperialists into the East and the necessity of “protecting” the people of East Germany from Western propaganda. This war of words culminated on August
13, 1961, when the citizens of the divided city of Berlin awoke to the sounds of construction. East German soldiers began to build a wall, one that eventually stretched for more than 100 miles, completely encircling the city of West Berlin, with minimal access through military checkpoints. The wall cut across streets and through subway and train stations, and separated families, religious congregations, and friends, dividing them for 28 years and 4 months, until it fell on November 9, 1989. The 1960s in West Germany were marked by generational conflict and the resurgence of the political left. Student movements in the 1960s in West Germany grew in response to a host of causes: nuclear disarmament, outdated curriculum and inadequate resources at universities, and Bonn’s support for U.S. involvement in Vietnam. In 1966 the West German economy, which had boomed for more than 15 years, suffered a depression, leading to increased unemployment and stagnation in industrial production. In addition, the political dominance of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU) came to end, as the parties were forced to build a coalition with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) to formulate policy in November 1966. This marked the first incursion of the SPD into the postwar West German cabinet. The power of the SPD continued to rise, culminating with its electoral victory in 1969, which gave it the majority of seats within the parliament and propelled Willy Brandt into the position of chancellor, which he held until May 1974. Within East Germany, the economy stabilized. The government, under the control of Walter Ulbricht, ensured higher production of consumer goods, built limited flexibility into centralized economic planning, and achieved an average annual increase in industrial production of 7 percent by 1967. Greater choices among clothing, food, and leisure activities also grew. But by the late 1960s, the climate turned harsher; under a new constitution, basic freedoms, such as the rights to emigrate, were stripped away. Ulbricht resigned in 1971. During the late 1960s the development of Ostpolitik, a thawing of relations between East and West, mediated the strict foreign policy of the Hallstein doctrine, established in 1955. This doctrine stated that the Federal Republic of Germany was the sole authoritative government of the German people and as such demanded that diplomatic recognition never be extended to East Germany. Among the practical implications of this policy was the fact that West Germany did not extend diplomatic relations to any of the Soviet satellite states in eastern Europe. Given the economic downturn and the need for expansion of export markets, the new coalition government first extended trade relations, and
then diplomatic relations, with states in eastern Europe. Negotiations culminated in December 1972, when the governments of West and East Germany signed the Basic Treaty, which guaranteed respect for the borders, officially recognized each other’s independence, and promised to renounce the use of force. reunification Since October 3, 1990, Germany has been a unified country again. Germany was first unified and subsequently became a nation-state in 1871. The date October 3, 1990, marks the day West Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland, or BRD) integrated East Germany (Deutsche Demokratische Republik, or DDR) under one political system: the democracy (Rechtsstaat) of the Federal Republic of Germany. Five new states were added to the existing 11, and the population grew by about 18 million, making Germany, with over 80 million inhabitants, the most populous country of the European Union. In 2000 Berlin again became the capital of Germany. By 1989 the two states had established themselves firmly as separate players on the world stage, with West Germany never having given up on the possibility of reunification. In January of that year, however, Erich Honecker—the GDR head of state and general secretary of the communist SED Party—confidently declared
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that the Berlin Wall would still stand in 50 or 100 years. Nonetheless, reform movements had begun to ripple through a few communist countries, beginning with the Solidarity movement in Poland in the 1980s, and in September 1989 Hungary opened its borders to Austria, allowing thousands of East Germans to escape via Hungary and Austria to West Germany. The festivities for the 40th anniversary of East Germany, on October 7, 1989, were accompanied by demonstrations demanding democracy and freedom of expression. Moreover, the vast majority of East Germans could monitor the wealth of West Germany via radio and television, and the contrast was too stark to be tolerated any longer. Even the “big brother,” the Soviet Union, talked of reforms, and in 1989 its leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, famously admonished the East German government to engage in change. By midOctober Honecker, who had been in power since 1971, was forced to resign and Egon Krenz took over. October continued to be marked by numerous sizable demonstrations. On November 7 the East German government resigned while the demonstrations continued. On the evening of November 9 the East German leadership suddenly opened the borders to West Germany and to West Berlin, permitting thousands of East Germans to visit the West for the first time in their lives.
The modern skyline of Frankfurt, Germany. After reunification, the German government strongly supported moves toward greater European integration and common action, but the German population was less certain.
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The remaining months brought rapid change for East Germans and their country. On November 10 East German soldiers began to take down the wall, and Hans Modrow became the new head of state. In December the Brandenburg Gate opened up to two-way traffic. Early 1990 saw more demonstrations. In February Helmut Kohl, chancellor of West Germany, met with Gorba chev, who granted Germany the right to unify and to do so at its own pace. In East Germany free elections were held in March for the first time, and in April, Lothar de Maizière became head of state; his coalition decided to unify East and West Germany according to Article 23 of West Germany’s constitution. Negotiations began between East Berlin and Bonn and between the Allied forces, who still had soldiers in both Germanies. In June another symbol of the divided states, the border crossing at Checkpoint Charlie, was demolished. In July the West German mark was designated as the common currency for both Germanies. In late August East German leaders decided that East Germany would join West Germany on October 3, 1990, and on September 12, 1990, the four Allied powers, the foreign minister of West Germany, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, and de Maizière signed the reunification contract in Moscow. Germany regained its sovereignty on October 1, and the four Allied powers suspended their rights. On October 3, 1990, Germany, after 45 years of separation, was once again one country. The date became an official holiday in Germany. 1991 to the present Following political reunification with the former German Democratic Republic on October 3, 1990, the Federal Republic of Germany grappled with how to merge its economic structures, legal codes, educational institutions, and most important, population into one unified nation; arguably the larger process is not yet complete. In addition, the stunningly quick reunification, not even one year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, brought with it unintended and unforeseen consequences. Germany struggled with an economic downturn, the pressure of larger political integration with the European Union, spikes in both anti-Semitism and xenophobia, and the growth of splinter political parties on the far Right and far Left, while still facing the fundamental question of whether or not the Germans truly stand as one people. One of the first steps after signing the official treaty to reunify the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic under article 23 of the Basic Law was to make provisions for including the former East German lands in the parliamentary system. In the first post-unification election, in Decem-
ber 1990, Helmut Kohl’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) won the most seats in four of the five former eastern states; the only state where the CDU polled the second-largest number of votes was in Brandenburg, where the Social Democratic Party (SPD) won more votes. The CDU continued to hold control of the government until the national elections of 1998 brought the SPD, under the leadership of Gerhard Schröder, into power. However, its inability to garner a clear majority of votes ushered in the so-called Red-Green coalition, building an alliance between the SPD and the Green Party. The CDU regained control over the government in the elections of May 2005, resulting in the election of Germany’s first female chancellor, Angela Merkel, who is also the first chancellor of reunified Germany to have come from the former eastern lands. In June 1991 the capital of Germany was transferred to Berlin. By 1994 a plan for moving the institutions of government had been drafted, and the process was complete by 1999. This vote had important implications, economic as well as symbolic. Undertaking this massive transfer of labor, offices, and institutions from Bonn to Berlin was extremely expensive; some estimates of costs ranged as high as $70 billion. This was fiercely debated given the shaky economic ground of Germany in the early 1990s. However, moving the capital to its historic place had another set of meanings. Placing the seat of government within former eastern lands indicated the state’s commitment to full integration of the two portions of Germany and shifted the orientation of the government further to the east. As a unified state, Germany is the most populous in western and central Europe at more than 80 million inhabitants. It is the third-largest state in terms of land and also one of the most industrialized and prosperous nations in Europe. But despite these advantages in population and industrial capability, the economic recession of 1992 had devastating effects on the newly unified German nation. The integration process proved to be ruinous for the eastern region; as demand for their products dropped off precipitously, hundreds of factories closed and millions of workers lost their jobs. Despite some optimistic projections, deindustrialization was the immediate effect, not economic growth. Between 1990 and 1991 the Gross National Product (GNP) of the East declined by 33.4 percent. Industrial production fell by 67 percent in 1990–92, while the prices of goods increased by 12 percent. A total of 3 million jobs were lost, amounting to close to 50 percent of its total workforce. The agricultural sector was particularly hard hit, losing 800,000 jobs from a total
of about 1 million. Older workers were at a serious disadvantage, lacking the education and skills necessary in the transition economy. Of the workers aged 52 to 63 who were employed before the fall of the wall, 90 percent were unemployed following unification. Economic development in the East would rebound slowly. Any waste was slashed at those entities that did manage to stay afloat. A complicating factor was that the “natural” market for their goods and services was floundering. Another difficulty encountered in the process was dealing with the claims (more than 1.5 million) of those who had lost property under the establishment of the communist state in 1949. When the Treuhand concluded its operations in 1994, it was running a deficit of 300 billion marks, a debt that had to be assumed by the unified German government. When the economic recession of 1992 hit, its impact was even more severe in the East. By 1993 more than 10 percent of the German workforce was unemployed, the highest level in the West in more than three decades, and an unheard-of phenomenon in the east, where chronic unemployment underneath communism did not exist. Although unemployment reached its nadir in late 1994, it continued at rates higher than before unification. As of 1997 eastern unemployment stood at 18.3 percent, whereas in the West it was 9.7 percent. By the end of 2005 unemployment rates overall stood at just over 11 percent. The German government, under the leadership of Helmut Kohl, remedied this drain on economic resources in part through an increase in taxes. This tension between “Wessis” and “Ossis” persists, with many in the East feeling as if their entire former way of life has been discredited and devalued, and many in the West blaming the East for difficult economic times. A common expression is that a wall remains in the heads of many, still separating West and East. One of the most visible, public reactions against the economic downturn and the dislocations caused by reunification was the backlash against foreigners. With the fall of communism across eastern Europe, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the regional conflict in the Balkans, the number of people seeking asylum in Germany jumped dramatically in the 1990s, at precisely the same time that the country was struggling to provide jobs, housing, and basic welfare to its own citizens. One aspect of the fallout from this development was an increase in the membership of right-wing political parties that emphasize “Germany for the Germans.” Although the public reaction against “foreigners” was even more negative in the former eastern lands than in the West, across Germany violence reached a height in
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1992, with more than 2,600 violent acts taken against immigrants, their neighborhoods, and their businesses. This led to stricter asylum legislation in 1993 as well as widespread public demonstrations against the acts and the attitudes that lay behind them. A more recent development was a strong immigration stream of Jews, particularly from the former Soviet Union, which led to some spikes in anti-Semitism. One of the largest groups suffering dislocations following unification was working women. In West Germany, women were not encouraged to hold full-time jobs and develop careers; in East Germany women were an integral part of the workforce. In 1989 at the time of the fall of the wall, only 51 percent of women were working in West Germany while 91 percent were employed in the East. After unification, as unemployment skyrocketed in the East, women were disproportionately represented among those who lost their jobs. Marriage and birth rates in the former eastern lands dropped drastically in the years immediately following unification, and divorce rates surged. Germany’s position within Europe also shifted after unification, with important debates about the country’s role within larger institutions—such as NATO and the emerging European Union—garnering public attention both in Germany and in the larger international arena. Although the German government strongly supported moves toward greater integration and common action, the German population was less certain. For example, when the European Union was trying to launch its common currency, the euro, in 1998, six out of 10 Germans did not want to give up the deutschmark in exchange for the euro. In 2005 an attempt to adopt a political constitution for the European Union was defeated in both Germany and France. Although economic unification clearly had its benefits for the German economy, its people remained wary. However, the German public still strongly supported the military alliance, NATO, as a means of providing for security and coordinated international efforts to combat crime and terrorism. See also Berlin blockade/airlift. Further reading: Ash, Timothy Garton. In Europe’s Name: Germany and the Divided Continent. New York: Random House, 1993; Brockmann, Stephen. Literature and German Reunification. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999; Craig, Gordon. The Germans. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1982; Fisher, Marc. After the Wall: Germany, the Germans and the Burdens of History. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995; Fulbrook, Mary. The Divided Nation: A History of Germany, 1918–1990. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991; Geipel,
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Gary, ed. Germany in a New Era. Indianapolis: Hudson Institute, 1993; Jarausch, Konrad. The Rush to German Unity. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994; Padgett, Stephen, ed. Parties and Party Systems in the New Germany. Aldershot, UK: Dartmouth, 1993; Tipton, Frank B. A History of Modern Germany Since 1815. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003; Turner, Henry Ashby, Jr., Germany from Partition to Reunification. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992; ———. The Two Germanies Since 1945. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987; Wallach, H. G. Peter, and Ronald A. Francisco. United Germany: The Past, Politics and Prospects. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992. Anke Finger and Laura J. Hilton
Ghana Ghana celebrated its independence from Britain on March 7, 1957. Ghana, formerly the Gold Coast, merged with a part of British Togoland, a former part of German West Africa ceded to Britain after World War I. Ghana was the first nation in Africa south of the Sahara to overthrow a colonial power; its independence was a momentous event for the people in the new nation and for people in the African diaspora everywhere. Ghana was deliberately named to highlight its historical political situation as the sixth African nation to receive independence from a major colonial power. Ghana’s leaders sought to link their nation to one of the great West African kingdoms of the past. This name represented both a political victory and a symbolic hope for black people everywhere. Held up as a symbol of black intelligence, self-determination, and power, Ghana’s independence led to many idealistic expectations. Its new leader, Kwame Nkrumah, had spent time in prison in the struggle for independence, and he led a nation with many contradictory expectations. Fueled by the positive outcome of his many years fighting for independence and imbued with a Pan-Africanist ideology, a nationalist outlook, and mounting racial pride, Nkrumah liked neither the capitalism of the West nor the communism of the East. He articulated a nationalist ideology that celebrated and encouraged traditional African culture and dress. In addition, he embraced the Pan-Africanism he had been exposed to as a student in the United States and London. He supported the development of racial identity and linked himself to the ideals of Marcus Garvey and W. E. B. Du Bois. What became known as “Nkrumahism” started out as a hybrid economic and social philosophy that com-
bined the best practices from both systems. Nkrumah’s “African Socialism” became the model for organizing society in Tanzania under Julius Nyerere and in Kenya under Jomo Kenyatta. Nkhrumah’s articulations of selfdetermination also influenced the doctrine of Pan-Arabism championed by Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. Nkrumah demanded free education on all levels and the development of rural health care as well as the construction of bridges, roads, railroads, and waterways to build up Ghana’s economy. Ghana’s independence had major consequences for global politics and the lessening of European hegemony. In the decades following Ghana’s independence, many linked the dissolution of the British Empire, the end of Portuguese colonial power in Africa, and the destruction of the apartheid system in South Africa to Ghanaian independence. Nkrumah instituted many customary practices to help maintain order and restore stability. While utilizing the British model of government at the superstructure level, Nkrumah sought to empower local chiefs and elders by restoring respect for and interest in traditional structures of society. Elders, healers, and local officials were all enlisted in his effort to make Ghana a stable nation. Although many blame Nkrumah for destroying the country with his socialist polities and making it ripe for coups, his vision led to Ghana’s independence and also defined the ethos of the new nation. Many of Nkrumah’s policies failed. There was a great deal of dissatisfaction with his government in the years leading to his ouster in 1966. Sixteen years of instability followed his exile. In 1981 Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings seized power in a countercoup. He suspended the constitution and banned political parties. In 1992 a new constitution was approved, free elections were held, and Rawlings was elected to two four-year terms. Under the terms of the 1992 constitution, executive power was vested in the president, who was named head of state and commander in chief of the armed forces. Rawlings was reelected president in 1996. Legislative power was vested in a single parliamentary chamber consisting of between 160 and 200 members chosen through direct adult suffrage for renewable four-year terms. Given that Rawlings could not be elected to a third term, John Kufuor, a rather unknown politician, was elected president in 2000. An effective leader, he was reelected in 2004. The politics of modern Ghana followed two trajectories: a doctrine of laissez-faire capitalism and the socialist-inspired revolutionary practices of Nkrumah. Kufuor expanded and refined a third political tradition, introduced by Rawlings: He
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continued policies of universal rural development while simultaneously opening up the private sector to external development and foreign investment. Much of the current economic and social optimism in Ghana is tied to an enlightened ruling class with close ties to the United States and Great Britain, and a successful diaspora of almost 2 million people who send almost half a billion dollars to Ghana every year. With a multilanguage, multiethnic, and diverse population, Ghana is a pluralistic society. Ghana has also been successful in attracting foreign investments from India, China, Lebanon, and other nations. Ghana also has a highly educated population of about 20 million people. It operates a 12-year preuniversity educational system and has five public universities, private universities, eight polytechnics, and 22 technical institutions as well as many educational exchange programs around the globe. Ghana has substantial economic potential. As a stable nation with a credible government, a working infrastructure, and a highly trained population, Ghana’s future seems bright. Although cacao is Ghana’s best-known crop, other major exports include bauxite, diamonds, gold, foodstuffs, handicrafts, and timber. As a popular tourist destination, Ghana is well known internationally. Further reading: Boateng, Charles Adom. The Political Legacy of Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2003; Davidson, Basil. The Empire of Ghana: Let Freedom Come: Africa in Modern History. Boston: Little, Brown, 1978; Falola, Toyin, ed. Ghana in Africa and the World: Essays in Honor of Adu Boahen. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2004; Gocking, Roger S. The History of Ghana. Oxford: Greenwood, 2005. Alphine W. Jefferson
globalization First investigated by Canadian scholar Marshall McLuhan in 1964 and then further explored since the 1970s, globalization is the process through which world populations become increasingly interconnected and interdependent, both culturally and economically. The process is often perceived by its critics as creating a sense of standardization throughout the globe and reinforcing economic inequalities between developed and underdeveloped countries. Advanced capitalism, enhanced by technological developments such as the Internet and electronic business transactions, is seen as stretching
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social, political, and economic activities across the borders of communities, nations, and continents. Global connections and the circulation of goods, ideas, capital, and people have deepened the impact of distant events on everyday life. Thus globalization entails two related phenomena: the development of a global economy and the rise of a global culture. The major transnational financial, political, and commercial institutions that are instrumental to globalization are the G8, the International Monetary Fund, the World Economic Forum, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization. Samuel Huntington coined the expression Davos Culture in his book The Clash of Civilizations (1996) to define such universal civilization. The phrase Davos Culture takes its name from Davos, the Swiss town that had hosted a preponderance of World Economic Forum meetings since 1971. The members of Davos Culture share the same visions of democracy and individualism, obviously favoring capitalism and the free market. The appeal of Davos Culture reaches across the political spectrum, often leading liberals and conservatives to share the same table. It has been noted that the 2005 meeting at Davos included not only a large contingent of the George W. Bush administration and the Republican Party but also a considerable representation of the Democratic Party, led by former president Bill Clinton and former vice president Al Gore. The rise of a new global economy involves a discrepancy between a huge decentralization of production processes, often to developing countries where manpower is cheaper and unions are weaker, and a simultaneous centralization of command and control processes in rich economies. Corporations, whose level of accountability to the general public has increasingly been questioned, are perceived to have replaced governments in economic and social control. Corporations involved in this massive exposure of exploitative labor practices have included Gap, Wal-Mart, Guess, Nike, Mattel, and Disney. Antiglobal organizations are also investigating the links between transnational corporations and totalitarian regimes in developing countries. Parallel to economic globalization is the phenomenon of cultural globalization. Its supporters claim that the rise of a global culture entails multiculturalism and a hybridization of national cultures. The creation of a global culture will also build a more peaceful world, based on shared cultural values. Critics of cultural globalization point out its darker side, claiming that cultural globalism destroys all local traditions and regional distinctions, creating a homogenized world culture. Local cultures are replaced by a uniform and single culture,
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dictated by the same powerful corporations that control the global economy. In addition, globalization through economic commoditization—the spreading of Western values and lifestyles through the selling of Western goods throughout the world—is not such a simple and straightforward process. In regard to economic globalization, cultural globalization has given rise to movements for resistance. Antiglobal theorists stress how corporations have hijacked culture and education through their aggressive marketing practices. The antiglobalization movement was thrown from the fringes to the center of political debates thanks to the protests in Seattle against the World Trade Organization in November 1999. Since then, major financial and commercial summits of the G8, the International Monetary Fund, the World Economic Forum, and the World Bank were disrupted by mass demonstrations in the streets of Washington, D.C.; Genoa; and Prague. After January 2001 annual counter-meetings were held at the World Social Forum in Pôrto Alegre, Brazil, under the slogan “Another World Is Possible.” Alternative media and communication networks such as Indymedia have been established to turn the Internet, one of the tools that makes globalization feasible, into a powerful anti-global weapon. In reaction to power centralization typical of the corporate world, antiglobal activists argue for fragmentation and radical power dispersal. Further reading: Appadurai, A. Globalization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001; Huntington, Samuel. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996; Klein, N. Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate. London: Flamingo, 2002; ———. No Logo. London: Flamingo, 2000; Ross, A. No Collar: The Humane Workplace and Its Hidden Costs. New York: Basic Books, 2002; Stiglitz, J. Globalization and Its Discontents. New York: W.W. Norton, 2003. Luca Prono
Gorbachev, Mikhail (1931– ) Soviet president
Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev was general secretary of the Communist Party, then president of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991. He was a reformer who attempted to fix the economic problems of the system and wanted democracy to grow within the country. He presided over the dismemberment and collapse of his nation.
Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan sign the INF Treaty limiting the use and production of ground-based ballistic missiles.
Gorbachev was born on March 2, 1931, in a small village in the Stavropol region in south Russia. Both his grandfathers were arrested as kulaks during a collectivization drive of 1928–33. His father joined the Communist Party and was a veteran of the Great Patriotic War (1941–45). Gorbachev himself was an eager student, joined the Communist Youth League, and gained acceptance to the law faculty at Moscow State University in 1950. He completed his studies in 1955. During his time in Moscow he met his future wife, Raisa Maksimovna Titorenko, who would play a crucial supporting role in his reforms throughout their lives. While in Moscow, Gorbachev gained a reputation as something of a liberal, publicly approving of the reformist efforts of the current leader, Nikita Khrushchev. He also became close friends with a Czech student, Zdenek Mlynar, who would be active in Czechoslovak politics during the reformist Prague Spring of 1968. After graduation, Gorbachev returned to Stavropol, where he practiced law for a few years. He was elected first secretary of the Stavropol city Komsomol committee in 1956. From there he began a quick ascent. In 1962 he moved to the Communist Party administration. He became first secretary of the Stavropol city party organization in 1966. In 1970 he rose to first secretary of the Stavropol region. After eight years he moved to Moscow, where he became the Central Committee secretary for agriculture. Within two years he was a full member of the Politburo, the ruling council of the Soviet state. Finally, in March 1985, he was chosen as general secretary of the Communist Party. Even before Gorbachev became general secretary, he was thinking about ways to reform the system. His ini-
tiatives followed a path laid out by the previous general secretary, Yuri Andropov. These were fairly conservative, calling for higher levels of productivity of labor. In 1986 Gorbachev announced a set of more radical proposals that he called perestroika, or restructuring. Perestroika called for decentralization and self-accounting for industries. He continued to innovate, even allowing cooperatives in order to gain control of illegal economic activities. None of his reforms challenged the basic nature of the Soviet Union’s planned economic system. democratization Political reforms became an integral part of perestroika. Because Gorbachev’s economic reforms were criticized and often ignored by entrenched party officials, he sought to remove them and bring new initiative through democratization. Multicandidate elections within the Communist Party were announced in 1987. Those elections were held in 1988, with thousands of contests throughout the country. When the Congress of People’s Deputies met afterward, it represented a newly reformed Communist Party that pushed Gorbachev to implement additional changes. Perhaps the most traumatic moment of Gorbachev’s reign occurred when the Chernobyl nuclear station exploded in April 1986. A mix of unsafe construction, insufficient maintenance, and human error led to the worst radiation leak in history. In its wake, Gorbachev launched the policy of glasnost, or openness, in earnest. At first it involved a few magazines and journals, such as Ogonek and Moscow News, but it quickly spread to almost all other media. These outlets began to publish stories that openly revealed the problems that faced the Soviet Union—including poverty, corruption, and divorce. In addition, there was a broad reexamination of Soviet history, leading to harsh criticism of Joseph Stalin and even Vladimir Lenin. Literary works and authors that had been banned reappeared, such as Mikhail Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita and Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. Glasnost brought an ambivalent response from the Soviet public. Many were happy to see the truth of the past revealed but many, perhaps a majority, felt that these revelations unnecessarily blackened the reputation of the Soviet Union. The pent-up hostility of the nations inside the Soviet Union was also released by Gorbachev’s economic, political, and cultural reforms. Beginning in Uzbekistan in 1986 national groups began to resist decisions made in Moscow. Arguments between Armenians and Azerbaijanis over a small piece of territory led to violent clashes in 1988 and demonstrated the increasing weak-
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ness of central authority. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania announced their sovereignty starting in 1988. A movement even began among the Russians, led by Boris Yeltsin, to limit the power of the Soviet government over their territory. The increasing pressure from these national groups weakened Gorbachev’s ability to hold the Soviet Union together. meeting with reagan Foreign affairs were the area where Gorbachev had the most success. Gorbachev pursued a policy of reducing international tension from the beginning of his rule. After 1985 Gorbachev quickly moved toward negotiations that would eventually lead to the end of the cold war. He met with U.S. president Ronald Reagan repeatedly throughout the 1980s. These meetings culminated in the first arms control treaty in a decade, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which removed both U.S. and Soviet nuclear-tipped missiles from Europe. The good relations continued with President George H. W. Bush, although Gorbachev was never able to gain the large restructuring loans that he had hoped for from the Western powers. The Soviet allies in eastern Europe benefited from Gorbachev’s approach to foreign policy. The centripetal forces unleashed by perestroika did not stop at the Soviet border. Gorbachev, however, felt that it was unwise to attempt to keep eastern Europe forcibly under Soviet control. Conservative regimes in the Soviet bloc were unable to respond to perestroika and glasnost. When they appealed to Gorbachev for military help, he refused. Once his policy of nonintervention became clear, these regimes unraveled very quickly. All of the communist states collapsed in 1989. Gorbachev received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 for his leading role in the reduction of international tensions and the generally peaceful transition to democracy. With the end of Soviet dominance over eastern Europe, Gorbachev faced increasing internal resistance to his reforms. He tried to strengthen his political position by convincing the Congress of People’s Deputies to create a new position—president of the Soviet Union— and elect him to it in March 1990. He also proposed the most radical transformation of the Soviet economy so far. Called “the 500 Days,” it was supposed to move the planned economy quickly to a market-based one. He abandoned it before it truly started. Within a few months Gorbachev moved in the opposite direction. He brought in new advisers who held a conservative vision for the future of the Soviet Union. This conservative swing reached its peak in January 1991, when Soviet
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troops moved into Lithuania in an attempt to prevent its declaration of independence. In spring 1991 Gorbachev proposed a new arrangement that would greatly decentralize power but keep the Soviet Union together. He called a nationwide referendum to vote on this new structure. It was approved by almost 75 percent of those who voted in March. However, Gorbachev’s archrival Boris Yeltsin used the referendum to create a position of president of the Russian Federation, from which he was able to undermine Gorbachev and his plans to hold the Soviet Union together. The new, weaker union was scheduled to go into effect on August 20, 1991. The weakness in this agreement led a group of conservatives to attempt to restore the centralized power of the Soviet state. A coup attempt was launched on August 19 by men that Gorbachev had appointed earlier. Gorbachev was placed under house arrest and the plotters declared martial law. The coup attempt was quickly defeated. Resistance from Yeltsin, now president of the Russian Federation, and thousands of Muscovites who gathered outside the Russian parliament convinced the army to remain uninvolved in the political struggle. The coup plotters gave in a few days later. When Gorbachev returned from house arrest, his power was fatally weakened. Yeltsin took the initiative after the failed coup. Yeltsin banned the Communist Party in Russia and undermined Gorbachev’s last attempts to hold the state together. After months of futile negotiation, Gorbachev resigned as president on December 25, and the Soviet Union was officially disbanded on December 31, 1991. Gorbachev remains active in Russian political life, though he is intensely disliked by most Russians. He ran for president of Russia in 1996 but received less than 1 percent of the vote. In 2006 he was the head of the Gorbachev Foundation in Moscow and traveled the world giving speeches. He is also the author of numerous books and a commentator on Russian and world politics. See also Armenia and Azerbaijan; cold war; Soviet Union, dissolution of the. Further reading: Beschloss, Michael, and Strobe Talbott. At the Highest Level: The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War. New York: Little Brown, 1994; Boldin, V. I. 10 Years That Shook the World. New York: Basic Books, 1994; Brown, Archie. The Gorbachev Factor. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996; Gorbachev, Mikhail. Memoirs. New York: Doubleday, 1996; ———. Perestroika. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987; Kotkin, Stephen. Armageddon Averted.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2001; McCauley, Martin. Gorbachev. New York: Longman Publishers, 1998. Karl Loewenstein
Graham, Billy (William Franklin Graham) (1918– ) evangelical leader
William Franklin (Billy) Graham is one of the bestknown and respected religious leaders of the 20th century. His influence has been immense in his roles as evangelist, as a shaper of modern evangelicalism, and as a link between evangelicalism and prominent political leaders, particularly Republican presidents. Graham was raised and educated in a Southern, fundamentalist milieu, but by the 1940s had graduated from Wheaton College in Illinois and had become a world-roaming evangelist with Youth for Christ. A 1949 Los Angeles crusade brought him to the attention of William Randolph Hearst, who helped boost his career among a national audience. This crusade set the pattern for Graham’s evangelistic appeal: In a context of cold war anxieties, Graham urged personal and national repentance to avoid divine judgment. Throughout his career Graham’s preaching would remain simple and direct, stressing that the answers to all essential questions are to be found in God through Jesus Christ. In other respects, however, Graham departed significantly from the conservatism of many of his constituents. He refused to allow his audiences to be segregated by race, as was common in the South when he began his ministry. Beginning with his 1957 crusade in New York City, he agreed to cooperate with mainline churches. Fundamentalists who insisted that no fellowship could be maintained with theological liberals considered this a fatal compromise. Far from accommodating any kind of liberalism, however, both of these positions followed from Graham’s principled biblicism. Indeed, along with several other figures, Graham was critical in shaping a post-fundamentalist stance for conservative Protestantism in the 1950s. Through the National Association of Evangelicals and Christianity Today, Graham and others helped evangelicals shed what many saw as the angry selfrighteousness of fundamentalism, as well as emerge from the cultural ghetto that kept them separated from “the world” and at the same time prevented their engaging it.
Great Leap Forward in China (1958–1961)
Graham’s belief that modern men and women were desperate for the Bible’s message led him to work with non-evangelicals who supported his crusades. It also made him welcome the attention of U.S. presidents who were eager to profit from associating with him. These were mostly symbiotic relationships: Politicians sought the approval of Graham’s constituency, and evangelicals in turn moved closer to the cultural mainstream. Graham would later express some regret that he had allowed himself to be used, especially by Richard Nixon, who aggressively cultivated religious conservatives. At the time it had seemed an appropriate way to bring biblical truths to the ears of the powerful. In the 1980s, Graham would again shock his more conservative supporters by questioning the morality of the nuclear arms buildup. Further reading: Graham, Billy. The Collected Works of Billy Graham. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2001. Martin, William. A Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story. New York: William Morrow, 1991. John Haas
Great Leap Forward in China (1958–1961) The People’s Republic of China (PRC) followed the Soviet Union’s model of planned economy on the socialist model. The success of the First Five-Year Plan (1953–57), undertaken with Soviet financial and technical aid, prompted the government to announce a more ambitious Second Five-Year Plan for 1958–62 that called for a 75 percent increase in industrial and agricultural production. This was not enough for party leader Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung), who proclaimed a “Great Leap Forward” in February 1958 with the goal of passing Great Britain in industrial production by 1972. It mandated an average 18 percent increase in steel, electricity, and coal production for that year. This was only the beginning of a series of escalating and totally unattainable goals for production. Mao called on the Chinese people to “walk on two legs,” that is, to use modern and sophisticated plants built with Soviet aid to make steel, along with primitive “backyard” furnaces manned by millions of untrained workers. By late 1958, 600,000 backyard furnaces had been built throughout China that smelted pots, pans, and farm implements, with wood from forests as fuel, and that produced millions of tons of unusable metal in order
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to fulfill their quotas and avoid punishment. To mobilize all the available labor force and to complete the socialist transformation of the people, more than 500 million peasants, or more than 98 percent of the rural population, were organized into 26,000 People’s Communes that controlled all aspects of their lives. In addition, some city people were organized military fashion into urban communes. Afraid of failure to realize Mao’s fantastic expectations, local Communist bosses competed with one another to announce overachievement of quotas and goals, which allowed the government to announce at the end of 1958 that industrial production for that year had exceeded that of 1957 by 65 percent. In launching the Great Leap Forward Mao was also motivated by his disapproval of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, whom Mao castigated as “revisionist” for giving incentives to improve productivity in Soviet agriculture. He boasted that he had found a shortcut, through the People’s Communes, to reach the ultimate Marxist utopia ahead of the Soviet Union and thus the right to lead the world communist movement. The Soviet Union, however, firmly rejected Mao’s claims when Khrushchev declared that “society cannot leap from capitalism to communism.” The debate over the validity of the Great Leap Forward widened the split in the international communist movement and contributed to worsening relations between China and the Soviet Union. In reality the Great Leap Forward brought unprecedented disaster to the Chinese people. By 1959 it was no longer possible for the government to deny that the economy had been crippled. The people were exhausted and demoralized, and famine stalked the land. Economists estimated that the economy had declined by $66 billion, and demographers concluded that more than 30 million people had died of starvation in the Mao-made famine, the worst in world history. At the Lushan Conference of communist leaders Mao had to admit his folly, stepped down from chairmanship of the PRC, and let others who had not lost touch with reality—called pragmatists—run the country to bring it back from ruin. See also Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China (1966–1976). Further reading: Becker, Jasper. Hungry Ghosts: Mao’s Secret Famine. New York: Henry Holt, 1998; Li Zhisui. The Private Life of Chairman Mao. Translated by Tai Hung-chao. New York: Random House, 1994; MacFarquhar, Roderick, and John K. Fairbank, eds. Cambridge History of China, vol. 14, The People’s Republic of China, part 1: The Emergence of
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Revolutionary China, 1949–1965. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China (1966–1976) The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (shortened to Cultural Revolution) that disrupted and ruined life, destroyed innumerable cultural artifacts, and caused the deaths of countless people between 1966 and 1976 was a power struggle within the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The background for this event was the catastrophic economic losses suffered in the Great Leap Forward that the chairman of the CCP and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung), instigated between 1958 and 1960. It led to a successful challenge to Mao’s power by pragmatic senior leaders in the party and compelled Mao to give up his state chairmanship to his second in command, Liu Shaoqi (Liu Shao-ch’i), and actual running of the CCP to Party Secretary Deng Xiaoping (Teng Hsiao-p’ing). These men—called pragmatists—dismantled the communes, scrapped the backyard furnaces, and restored private plots to peasants. Their measures led to a gradual economic recovery but left Mao seething impotently. To recover power, Mao turned to his wife, Jiang Qing, who had been out of the limelight and held little power until now. She went to Shanghai and formed an alliance with local Communist leaders Zhang Chunqiao (Chang Chun-ch’iao), Yao Wenyuan (Yao Wenyuan), and a young factory activist named Wang Hongwen (Wang Hung-wen)—they would later be labeled the Gang of Four. Mao next called on young people, mostly students in secondary schools and universities, to form Red Guard units. Using Mao’s sayings, collected in a little Red Book, as their “Bible,” they became his vanguard in denouncing and harassing party bureaucrats, intellectuals, and anyone in power who might oppose Mao. They also destroyed anything they considered “old” and therefore bad, including countless cultural treasures. Jiang took charge of the media. She banned most forms of cultural expression, including Western classical music (Beethoven was denounced as a counterrevolutionary), Chinese operas, movies, and so on, and replaced them with so-called revolutionary operas. Schools were closed, and intellectuals were sent to forced labor camps and for “reeducation.”
The Red Guards attacked Liu Shaoqi as a revisionist; he was dismissed and humiliated, and later died in prison. Deng Xiaoping was also purged, as were countless others. Among top leaders Premier Zhou Enlai (Chou En-lai) was only one of a few who retained his post. At the height of their power between August and November 1966, Mao eight times reviewed the Red Guards at Tiananmen Square in Beijing (Peking) and lauded them for their revolutionary zeal. While most senior CCP leaders were ousted and imprisoned, the star of Minister of Defense Lin Biao (Lin Piao) rose. When the Red Guards became totally uncontrollable and began battling among themselves Mao called on Lin to use the army to put them down. Most Red Guards were then “sent down” to the countryside for “reeducation.” Lin was elevated to vice chairman of the Central Committee of the CCP in 1968 and was designated Mao’s “closest comrade-in-arms and successor” in the revised CCP constitution. A power struggle next developed between Mao and Lin, each plotting to eliminate the other. In September 1971 Lin, his powerful wife Ye Qun (Yeh Chun), and their son, an air force officer, plotted to assassinate Mao and seize power in a coup d’état. Upon the plan’s discovery they fled toward the Soviet Union in an air force jet piloted by the younger Lin, which crashed in Outer Mongolia, killing them all. Several of Lin’s confederates were arrested but the news of the attempted coup and Lin’s death was kept a secret until 1973. With Lin dead Jiang Qing and her allies became even more powerful, and Jiang pressured the ailing Mao to confirm her as his successor. Zhou Enlai and other senior party leaders opposed her and rehabilitated the disgraced Deng Xiaoping, whom Zhou groomed as successor. When Zhou died in January 1976, Deng’s position became insecure and he disappeared from public view, seeking refuge in southern China, where a local military commander protected him. Finally, just before he died Mao chose a dark horse to succeed him with the words “with you in charge I am at ease” scribbled on a sheet of paper. He was former minister of public security, Hua Guofeng (Hua Kuo-feng). Mao died on September 9, 1976. A power struggle ensued among Jiang and her allies, and Hua Guofeng and the resurfaced Deng Xiaoping and other CCP elders. On October 12 the Gang of Four were arrested in a dramatic showdown. These events ended the Maoist era, the succession struggle, and a decade of unprecedented turmoil called the Cultural Revolution. See also Great Leap Forward in China (1958–1961).
Great Society (U.S.)
Further reading: Dittmer, Lowell. Liu Shao-ch’i and the Chinese Cultural Revolution: The Politics of Mass Criticism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975; Gao, Yuan. Born Red: A Chronicle of the Cultural Revolution. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987; MacFarquhar, Roderick, and Michael Schoenhals. Mao’s Last Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006; Thurston, Ann F. Enemies of the People: The Ordeal of Intellectuals in China’s Great Cultural Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986. Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur
Great Society (U.S.) President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society was an aggressive agenda of domestic legislative reforms. Introduced at a speech given at the University of Michigan in May 1964, Johnson’s list of programs seemed limitless, and would lead, he hoped, to better schools, better health, better cities, safer highways, a more beautiful nation, support for the arts, and more equality. By the time Johnson became president, he had already had three decades of political experience. During his tenure in Congress, he had experienced New Deal legislation and the mobilization of resources against enemies in World War II. Once he became president, Johnson decided to use all of the powers given to him to extend and even surpass the New Deal’s progressive record. With his landslide victory in the 1964 election, he had a powerful mandate and a large Democratic majority in Congress. These factors gave Johnson what he needed to carry out his plan. He was particularly interested in equality of opportunity, improved urban conditions, an improved educational system, ending poverty, and implementing racial justice. The Housing and Urban Development Act was put into effect in 1965. It offered reduced interest rates to builders of housing for the poor and elderly. In addition, it allocated funds for urban beautification programs, health programs, recreation centers, and improvements to inner-city housing and provided a rent-supplement program for the poor. To streamline and control programs, the law made it mandatory that all applications for federal aid to cities be approved by city or regional planning agencies. To administer the new programs, Congress created a new cabinet secretary and agency, the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In 1964 Congress granted nearly $400 million for masstransit planning. In 1966 Congress allocated even more
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funds for that purpose, and created a new agency, the Department of Transportation, to administer them. The Model Cities Act of 1966 granted $1.2 billion for slum clearance and removal. The goal of the act was to revitalize inner-city life in many respects, including housing, schools, job training, recreation, and health care. The law gave funds to new model communities. Another of Johnson’s goals was to improve the quality of education. Johnson, a former teacher, envisioned the Great Society as one in which all children could enrich their minds. To achieve this, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was passed in 1965 and allocated over $1 billion for programs to aid children who were seen as educationally deprived. The bulk of that money went to schools in poor districts. However, the bill also targeted bilingual education for Hispanic children and the education of disabled children. In addition to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Higher Education Act was also passed in 1965. This act created a federal scholarship and loan program for college students and provided library grants to colleges and universities to increase their resources. These two acts had an enormous impact on the state of education in the United States, but also increased government expenditures substantially. In 1965 alone, government spending on education was over $4 billion. The Great Society drastically improved the state of healthcare. Johnson’s Medicare bill was enacted by Congress in 1965 and provided health insurance for all Americans over the age of 65. Medicare was initially provided with a fund of $6.5 billion, with long-range funding to come from increased social security payroll deductions. To increase the number of health professionals, Congress passed funding for nursing and medical schools and provided scholarships for students to enter those fields. Medicare’s companion program, Medicaid, administered through state welfare systems, provided healthcare for poor Americans. Preserving the environment and national splendor was another of Johnson’s Great Society goals. Johnson sought to combat the effects of industrialization, which included shrinking wilderness areas, vanishing species of wildlife, a degradation of the landscape, and pollution. During Johnson’s presidency, Congress passed nearly 300 pieces of legislation relating to beautification, pollution, and conservation—amounting to expenditures of $12 billion. Another aspect of Johnson’s Great Society was the “war on poverty.” One of the largest pieces of legislation passed to wage the war on poverty was the Economic Opportunity Act, passed in August 1964. The act had 10 major parts. Head Start offered basic skills
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training to preschoolers. The Upward Bound program helped gifted students from poor families attend college. Another section of the act expanded the 1962 Manpower Development and Training Act, which focused on job training. Job Corps was created to teach important and marketable skills to inner-city youth, and the Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) was a domestic parallel to President John F. Kennedy’s Peace Corps. The Legal Services Program provided lawyers to defend the rights of low-income citizens. Other parts of the Economic Opportunity Act funded public works programs in poor and rural areas and provided loans for small farmers and small businesses. To administer the war on poverty, the act created the Office of Economic Opportunity. Another section of the Economic Opportunity Act was the Community Action Program. It allocated $300 million for local antipoverty programs. This initiative reflected the belief held by some that social-policy formation had too many experts and bureaucrats and lacked grassroots input. By 1966 more than 1,000 Community Action Programs were in place, including in many African-American and Mexican-American inner-city neighborhoods. They led to increased community activism. The programs encouraged political organization and community development, and when used as intended, their funds went to education, medical services, and legal services. court decisions The Supreme Court had its part in the Great Society as well. The Court’s decisions improved individual rights, equal protection under the law, and electoral processes. To help give all citizens an equal voice at the polls, Baker v. Carr (1962) made states do all that was practical to maintain population balance in the drawing of congressional and state legislature lines. Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) ensured that poor people would have legal counsel provided to them by the court if they could not afford to pay. The 1966 case of Miranda v. Arizona mandated that people be informed of their legal rights when placed under arrest. Civil rights was another integral part of the Great Society. However, it was also one of the hardest to achieve. Before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, opponents of the bill filibustered for 75 days. However, on June 11, the bill passed the Senate by a vote of 73 to 27. The bill targeted racism in American life. It made it easier for the attorney general to take part in all civil rights cases and allowed him or her to prosecute segregated school districts and election officials who denied voting rights to black Americans. Other sections for-
bade discrimination in public facilities, hiring, and federally funded programs. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 authorized federal officials to register voters and oversee elections. It outlawed long-standing measures used primarily in southern states to keep African Americans from voting. By mid-1966 a half-million African Americans were registered to vote in the South; by 1968 nearly 400 African Americans held elected office in that region. A final civil rights measure, the Open Housing Act, was passed in 1968 and outlawed racial discrimination in the sale or rental of housing. Also under the heading of civil rights was the Immigration Act of 1965, which abolished discriminatory national-origins policies. Although some of Johnson’s Great Society measures were received with mixed feelings, they helped overall to improve the quality of life for millions of Americans. The impact of his legislation is still felt today. However, even with all of the success of President Johnson’s Great Society, his presidency was marred by the stigma of Vietnam, the cost of which curtailed spending on some of his Great Society programs. His noble and idealistic crusade was cut short by a bitter and unpopular war. See also Vietnam War. Further reading: Andrews, John A. Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society. Chicago: I.R. Dee, 1998; Bernstein, Irving. Guns or Butter: The Presidency of Lyndon Johnson. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995; Bornet, Vaughn Davis. The Presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1983; Kearns-Goodwin, Doris. Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream. New York: New American Library, 1976. James E. Seelye, Jr.
Greek Junta The Greek Junta is the name given to the April 21, 1967, military coup that after seven years ended Greek parliamentary democracy. The suggested reason for this military action was the prevention of an impending communist takeover. However, there remains little or no evidence to confirm that this threat was real. The immediate background to the event was a series of social, economic, and political developments in the period from 1963 to 1967 that affected Greek stability. Particularly unsettling was the election of George Papandreou’s Center Union government in February 1964. Papandreou attempted a number of social and
economic reforms and promoted his more radical son, Andreas Papandreou, to the economics ministry, which caused splits in his own party. A leftist conspiracy of military personnel known as ASPIDA, which implicated Andreas and threatened the monarchy and the existing military structure, was also uncovered during this time. Papandreou resigned in July 1965. Greece then entered a period of continual uncertainty with a series of unsatisfactory governments that failed to establish a solid governing base. The king eventually proposed new elections for May 1967. The Right, especially within the military, had become suspicious of these political maneuvers and the accompanying instability. Many of the officers came from the lower social classes and felt that their rise and prestige had been undermined by the country’s corrupt political elite. In addition to social tension, Cyprus, under Archbishop Makarios’s leadership, was demanding concessions from the island’s Turkish minority, who threatened to bring about outright war with Turkey. A Turkish invasion was prevented in 1964 by the United States and peace was maintained to a degree by United Nations peacekeeping forces. Additionally, Greece’s King Constantine II was coping with youth and inexperience, having been king only since March 1964. The threat of George Papandreou’s return to power motivated the king to plan his own revolt, which was also scheduled for April 21, 1967. However, this coup was circumvented by a group of young officers. Their action changed the course of postwar Greek history and took the entire political establishment by surprise. Led by Colonels Georgios Papadopoulos and Nicholas Makarezos and Brigadier Stylianos Pattakos and backed by a vague revolutionary council, the army struck on the morning of April 21. Their plan, codenamed Prometheus, proved effective. Communications were seized, as were other key civic and military installations, and martial law was declared, which appeared to be endorsed by the king and his advisers. Constantine attempted a countercoup in December 1967; it was ill-conceived and failed even before it started. Following this fiasco, Constantine’s final recourse was to flee into exile with his family. The junta’s political philosophy was ill-defined but generally paternalistic and authoritarian, with populist overtones designed to appeal to the peasantry and workers. They promoted Greek nationalism and proclaimed themselves to be defenders of Greek values, civilization, and Christianity. In essence, the junta wanted to discipline Greek society and, in 1968, produced a new authoritarian constitution to allow them
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to do so. They made frequent use of propaganda and the secret police (Asphaleia) and military police (ESA) to silence critics and opponents. Human rights abuses were numerous. Such violations gave the colonels a bad international reputation within Europe and left them with few friends. Colonel Georgios Papadopoulos soon rose to command the regime, a position he held until November 1973. The regime managed to maintain its membership in nato while suffering only minor criticisms, although U.S. military aid was curtailed from 1967 to 1973. Greece’s strategic position in the Mediterranean in the face of cold war realities meant that the United States needed Greek ports to be open to the Sixth Fleet. The junta eventually failed because of its inability to govern effectively or respond to external crises. By relying on crude suppression, the colonels destroyed any chance for popular support. Campaigns against the regime, such as Andreas Papandreou’s Panhellenic Liberation Movement, were maintained from abroad. But the most important cause was the rise of an active university student opposition. A weakened leadership threatened the regime’s ability to rule. This, in turn, led Dimitrios Ioannidis—a previous secret police head—to seize junta leadership from Papadopoulos. Ioannidis then searched for a populist/nationalist cause to restore the government. A confrontation with Turkey over oil deposits in the Aegean seemed the ideal circumstance. The junta attempted in July 1974 to overthrow Makarios in Cyprus. Turkey responded by invading the Turkish side of the island. Ioannidis thought he had the military challenge he needed, but dissent and dissatisfaction in the heart of the military establishment left him isolated. The only resolution to the junta’s failure was a return to legitimacy, which was now backed by the military itself. Former prime minister Konstantinos Karamanlis returned from exile in Paris and restored democratic government. He reintroduced political parties, created a new constitution modeled on that of France, and purged junta supporters from the military and civil service. He also sought a referendum on the future of the monarchy, which produced a 70 percent majority against the restoration of the king. The new constitution of 1975 increased the powers of the executive in the form of a president. The junta leaders were tried and given death sentences, which were later commuted. The junta’s civilian supporters avoided major criminal trials. Some military and police officers were convicted of more serious crimes. The demise of the
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junta came without much bloodshed and with a general spirit of leniency. See also Cyprus, Turkish invasion of. Further reading: Couloumbis, Theodore. The Greek Junta Phenomenon. New York: Pella, 2004; Georghiou, Vassos. The Unrepentant. Bloomington, IN: Authorhouse, 2005; McNeill, William H. Metamorphosis of Greece since World War II. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978; Woodhouse, C. M. The Rise and Fall of the Colonels. London: Granada, 1985; Yennaris, Costas. From the East: Conflict and Partition in Cyprus. Cambridge: Elliot and Thompson, 2003. Theodore W. Eversole
Green Revolution The term Green Revolution refers to the incredible transformation of agriculture in developing nations between the 1940s and 1960s. Programs of agricultural research and the development of infrastructure led to significant increases in agricultural production. The Green Revolution has had significant social and ecological impact on the world, and because of this has been equally praised and criticized. For English wheat yield to increase from one-half metric ton per hectare to two metric tons took 1,000 years; the increase from two to six metric tons took only 40 years. The change took place due to improvements in breeding, agronomy, and the use of pesticides and fertilizers. The result was that by the second half of the 20th century most industrial countries were agriculturally self-sufficient. Developing countries were less fortunate. Colonial powers invested little in the food production systems of their colonies and did nothing to slow population growth, so by independence in the 1950s–1960s, the new nations were approaching a crisis. By the mid1960s hunger and malnutrition were widespread. Asia was particularly dependent on food aid from developed countries. India suffered back-to-back droughts in the mid-1960s, exacerbating the problem. The Rockefeller and Ford foundations led in the establishment of the international agricultural research system to adapt the latest science and technology to the Third World. Efforts focused on rice and wheat, two of the principal sources of food in the developing world. U.S. Agency for International Development administrator William S. Gaud coined the term “Green Revolution” in 1968.
The Green Revolution created higher crop yields, but also may have contributed to widespread environmental damage.
The Green Revolution spread rapidly. By 1970 approximately 20 percent of the Third World’s wheat area and 30 percent of the rice land in developing countries were planted in high-yield varieties. By 1990 the share was 70 percent for both. The Green Revolution led to markedly improved yields of cereal grains during the 1960s–1970s due to the development of new seeds through genetics. The beginnings came in Mexico during the 1940s when Dr. Norman E. Borlaug led a team that developed a strain of wheat that was resistant to disease and efficient in converting fertilizer and water into grain. Shorter and sturdier stalks were necessary to allow the plant to hold the larger grain yield. Borlaug developed dwarf varieties with the requisite characteristics. Initially, Mexico was importing half the wheat it needed. By 1956 it was self-sufficient, and by 1964 it was exporting half a million tons annually. Equal success in India and Pakistan kept millions of people from starving. As the technologies spread through the world, crop yields increased each year. But as production of rice and wheat and other genetically altered crops grew, output of other indigenous crops, including pulses, declined. After wheat came corn, although with less success. Building on the efforts of China, Japan, and Taiwan, the International Rice Research Institute developed semidwarf rice plants. By 1992 a network of 18 research centers, primarily in developing countries, continued the effort to improve yields. Funding came from the Rockefeller Foundation and other private foundations, nation-
al governments, and international agencies including the World Bank. At the same time the Green Revolution came under criticism because it requires fertilizer, irrigation, and other tools unavailable to impoverished farmers. Further, it may be ecologically harmful. Most important, its emphasis on monoculture leads to a loss of genetic diversity. Academic critics, such as the economist Arartya Sen, note that increasing food production does not necessarily lead to improved food security. Most industrialized nations consume Green Revolution hybrids. The crops are created through crossbreeding or random mutagenesis to improve crop yield and increase durability to allow for longer shipment and storage times. Other alterations allow plumper tomatoes or straighter rows of corn. Uniformity eases mechanical harvest. Modified strains still depended heavily on the high use of fertilizers, which consume fossil fuels, instead of the traditional crop rotation, mixing of crops, and use of animal manure. And large-scale irrigation entailed the use of large volumes of natural monsoon and other water sources. It also required poor farmers to use simple irrigation techniques. Control of pests and weeds by pesticides and herbicides also improved the crops. The Green Revolution allowed a record grain output of 131 million tons in 1978–79. India became one of the world’s largest producers, and an exporter of food grain. No other nation matched India’s success. The Green Revolution also allowed food production to match population growth. Mechanization has reduced the need for low-skilled human labor. Farmers and agricultural workers have seen increases in income as production costs have dropped markedly. Mechanization encouraged collectivization— or corporatism—because the machines are too expensive for small landowners. After the initial exploitation, real improvement occurred for many poor farmers. Between 1970 and 1995, real per capita incomes in Asia almost doubled, with a decline in poverty from nearly 60 percent to less than 33 percent. As population increased 60 percent between 1975 and 1995, poverty decreased from 1.15 billion to 825 million people. India’s rural poor before the mid-1960s ranged from 50 to 65 percent; by 1993 the number was about 33 percent. Vandana Shiva and other critics of the Green Revolution object to the emphasis on genetically modified, high-yield crops at the expense of quality ones. The dependence on a few strains increases the risk of disaster should a new crop pest arise. The revolution also makes populations dependent on external sources of food. And the potential for future improvement through breeding of different strains is weakened.
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Critics also note that the reduction in crop types leads to a less varied, less healthy diet, because the crops are produced for volume, not nutritional quality. Herbicides kill wild plants that are traditionally eaten as vegetables, further restricting the variety in many diets. Pesticides also kill the fish in rice paddies. Water buffalo exposed to the pesticide-rich land develop hoof-and-mouth disease. Some villages that were previously self-sufficient are suddenly enduring famine that seems irreversible. Supporters note that the Green Revolution has created higher gross nutrition levels and increased the intake of calories. To promote variety, advocates encourage the planting of vegetable gardens. The newer varieties have improved nutrient content, for example, the “golden rice” with increased carotene, and there is more attention to developing altered versions of less common crops. High-yield sorghum, millet, maize, cassava, and beans are now available. The Green Revolution changes social arrangements. Many hybrids are sterile. Others are sold with the restriction that farmers cannot save seed. Farmers have to buy seed each year, and the seed they buy is usually hybrid because traditional seeds produce much less. The Green Revolution also brought traditional subsistence farmers into the world of large-scale industrial agriculture. Many are forced off their farms and into urban poverty because their small holdings are not competitive with the large agribusinesses. Dependence on chemical fertilizers also leads to ecological damage such as on the Pacific island of Nauru, which was mined extensively for its phosphates. Chemical runoff from fields pollutes streams and other water supplies. DDT and other chemicals used in the early Green Revolution have given way to safer varieties, but the impact remains. Critics claim that the Green Revolution’s methods destroy land quality because irrigation increases salinity, soil erosion increases, and the soil loses organic material and trace elements due to reliance on artificial means of stimulating growth. The soil weakens, and chemical dependency grows until the soil finally fails. Supporters counter that new techniques will develop as resources become scarce or environmental damage becomes likely. They note that no-till farming has decreased erosion. And work continues on the development of alternative energy sources, disease- and pestresistant crops, and closed nutrient cycles. Further reading: Cornell’s Program on Science. Technology, and Society, Food, Population, and Employment; The Impact of the Green Revolution. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1973; Hossain, Mahabub. Nature and Impact of the Green
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Revolution in Bangladesh. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute, 1988. John H. Barnhill
Grenada, U.S. invasion of (1983) On October 25–28, 1983, the United States—under President Ronald Reagan—invaded the small Caribbean island-nation of Grenada, deposed its leftist government, and installed a government more in keeping with the Reagan administration’s perception of U.S. geostrategic interests in the Western Hemisphere. A clear violation of international law, the action garnered widespread domestic popular and bipartisan support, while being roundly condemned by much of the international community. The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly condemned the invasion; in the Security Council the United States cast the sole dissenting vote on a resolution condemning it. The invasion boosted Reagan’s popularity at home; intimidated leftist movements and parties throughout the circum-Caribbean; and resulted in a corrupt and elite-dominated post-invasion government characteristic of the region. Undertaken by some 7,000 U.S. troops, the invasion caused 118 deaths (19 U.S.; 69 Grenadan; 25 Cuban) and 533 were wounded, while U.S. forces detained 638 Cubans as prisoners of war. U.S. forces withdrew from the island in December. The invasion’s antecedents have been traced to the intensification of the cold war under Reagan; the 1979 triumph of the leftist Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua; ongoing leftist revolutionary movements and civil wars in El Salvador, Guatemala, and elsewhere in the circumCaribbean; and the March 13, 1979, coup d’état in Grenada by the leftist New Jewel Movement, led by the charismatic Marxist-influenced attorney Maurice Bishop. Independent from Great Britain since 1974, Grenada was ruled from 1974 to 1979 by Prime Minister Sir Eric Gairy, widely considered despotic and notorious for his preoccupations with the occult, whose “Mongoose Squad” kept his opponents in check and himself in power. Most of the island’s 110,000 inhabitants welcomed the New Jewel coup. From 1979 to 1983, the economy grew at an average of 9 percent (very high for the Caribbean during this period, which included a global recession in 1981–82); unemployment declined from 45 to 14 percent; literacy rates increased from 85 to 98 percent; and the nation’s health, education, and welfare systems were reformed and expanded.
Bishop, as much a nationalist as socialist and influenced as much by Jamaican musician Bob Marley as by Marx, articulated a socialist, anti-imperialist vision at odds with express U.S. economic, strategic, and security interests in the region. The Bishop government did not hold elections as promised, imposed press censorship, jailed political opponents, and lent rhetorical support to the Soviet Union and Cuba. On October 19, 1983, New Jewel hard-liner Bernard Coard ousted Bishop, precipitating islandwide protests and a general strike. After crowds forced Bishop’s release, Coard’s forces killed several dozen protesters and executed Bishop and two cabinet members. The main U.S. rationale for its invasion was to protect the lives of more than 800 U.S. medical students at the St. George’s School of Medicine, whom the Reagan administration claimed were in imminent danger and prevented from departing. The Grenada invasion comprises a minor but revealing episode in the late cold war in the Western Hemisphere. Further reading: Dunn, Peter M., and Bruce W. Watson, eds. American Intervention in Grenada: The Implications of Operation “Urgent Fury.” Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985; Lewis, Gordon K. Grenada: The Jewel Despoiled. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987. Michael J. Schroeder
Guatemala, civil war in (1960–1996) From 1960 to 1996, the nation-state of Guatemala was convulsed by a civil war that caused the deaths of at least 200,000 people. The worst years of the violence were 1981–82, when the U.S.-backed government launched what has been accurately characterized by the Report of the Guatemalan Commission for Historical Clarification as “acts of genocide” against the country’s majority indigenous population. The same report concluded that “[the] majority of human rights violations occurred with the knowledge or by order of the highest authorities of the State.” An important component of the cold war in the Western Hemisphere, the history of Guatemala from 1954 to 1996 was mostly shaped by the country’s extreme inequalities in landowning, wealth, and power; U.S. military assistance and economic and political intervention expressly intended to combat the perceived threat of international communism; a dictatorial Guatemalan state dominated by the military and backed by the U.S. government, the country’s traditional landholding oligarchy, and right-wing paramilitaries; and the struggles
of civil society—including labor unions, peasant leagues, indigenous and human rights groups, political parties, and guerrilla organizations—to create a more just and equitable society. The short-term origins of the civil war have been traced to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency– orchestrated coup of 1954, following a decade of farreaching reforms, which overthrew the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz and installed a military dictatorship headed by Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas. In 1960 a group of junior officers revolted and formed an even more hard-line military government. In the early 1960s several guerrilla organizations became active in rural districts, including the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP); the Revolutionary Organization of Armed People (ORPA); and the Rebel Armed Forces (FAR). In 1982, the guerrilla organizations combined to form the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG). Beginning in 1966 the army launched a major counterinsurgency campaign in rural areas that eliminated most armed resistance to the regime. Guerrilla operations continued in urban areas through economic sabotage and targeted assassinations. Repression by the military, right-wing paramilitaries, and death squads such as the White Hand intensified—with tortures and murders of labor organizers, community activists, students, professionals, and other suspected leftists. In March 1982 a military coup installed as president General Efraín Ríos Montt, a right-wing extremist, 1974 presidential candidate, and lay pastor in the evangelical Protestant “Church of the Word.” His presidency (1982–83) is linked to the worst human rights abuses in the 36-year civil war, with human rights organizations amply documenting the “acts of genocide” perpetrated by his government. In March 1994 a United Nations–sponsored peace process resulted in an accord between the URNG and the government. In January 1996 Álvaro Arzu, candidate of the center-right National Advancement Party (PAN), was elected as president. The final peace accord was signed on December 29, 1996, formally ending the 36-year civil war, the major events of which are amply documented in the 1999 CEH Report and related reports. Further reading: Guatemala, Memory of Silence, Tz’inil Na’tab’al, Report of the Commission For Historical Clarification. (CEH), 1999, http://shr.aaas.org/guatemala/ceh/report/ english/toc.html (accessed February 12, 2007); Guatemala, Never Again! REMHI, Recovery of Historical Memory Proj-
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ect: The Official Report of the Human Rights Office, Archdiocese of Guatemala. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999. Michael J. Schroeder
Guevara, Ernesto “Che”
(1927–1967) Latin American revolutionary An iconic Latin American revolutionary whose visage remains emblematic of leftist and Marxist struggles throughout the continent and world, Ernesto Guevara de la Serna joined Fidel Castro’s 26 July Movement in late 1955. An exceptionally effective guerrilla leader, his charisma, intelligence, and revolutionary idealism soon made him one of the leading figures of the early years of the Cuban revolution. He was the primary impetus behind the notion of the socialist “New Man,” at the core of many Cuban government policies in the early 1960s, in which revolutionary fervor was seen as more fundamental than material incentives (such as wages and benefits) in propelling workers to produce. Convinced that Cuba’s successes could be duplicated in other countries through what he called the “foco” theory of revolution, in which a small band of revolutionaries could spark a mass insurrection and topple dictatorships, he journeyed to Bolivia in 1967 to test his theory. The anticipated popular uprising failed to materialize, and after a few months he was captured and executed by the Bolivian military. His writings on revolution and guerrilla warfare remain classics of the era. Born on June 14, 1927, to a wealthy landowning family in Rosario, Argentina, Guevara was a frail and sickly boy, suffering asthma that plagued him throughout his life. Raised Roman Catholic, because of his asthma he was educated mainly at home by his mother, Celia de la Serna y Llosa, and his four siblings. His father, Ernesto Guevara Lynch, was a businessman and for a time ran a mate (tea) farm owned by his wife. Both were committed leftists. From his mother, to whom he remained emotionally close throughout his life, he acquired his lifelong passion for books, learning, and politics. In 1943 when Guevara was 16, his family moved to Córdoba. After completing his high school studies he began studying engineering. In 1947 he and his family moved to Buenos Aires, where he entered the university to study engineering before switching to medicine. In 1951 he and a friend embarked on a yearlong motorcycle journey through South America, where he saw firsthand the continent’s poverty and social injustices (as portrayed in his journals and dramatized in the 2004 film The Motorcycle Diaries). Graduating from
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medical school in 1953, he journeyed through Bolivia and Peru to Guatemala, where he witnessed the social revolution under President Jacobo Arbenz. After Arbenz’s overthrow in a U.S.-orchestrated coup in 1954, which steeled Guevara’s anti-imperialism, Guevara journeyed to Mexico and established contact with Cuban exile Fidel Castro. Convinced that Castro was the visionary revolutionary he had long sought, he joined Castro’s 26 July Movement and soon became one of its leaders. The group embarked for Cuba in November 1956, and for the next two years Guevara played a central role in the guerrilla war against Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, earning a reputation as a skilled and sometimes ruthless commander. After Batista’s ouster in January 1959, Guevara was appointed to the National Institute of Agrarian Reform, and later became president of the National Bank, minister of industries, and ambassador to the United Nations. During this period he developed his ideas regarding the socialist New Man and his foco theory of revolution. After failing in several attempts to launch socialist revolutions in other countries (including Panama, the Dominican Republic, and Congo), in late 1966 he traveled to Bolivia in the hope of sparking a mass insurrection. On October 8, 1967, he and his bedraggled forces were captured by the Bolivian military, and the next day he was executed. He is widely considered one of the most important revolutionary figures of the 20th century. Further reading: Anderson, Jon Lee. Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life. New York: Grove Press, 1997; Castañeda, Jorge G. Compañero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara. New York: Knopf, 1997. Michael J. Schroeder
Gulf War, First (1991) The First Gulf War was fought by a coalition of forces from 34 countries against Iraq in 1991 in response to the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The war began because of several crises stemming from the Iran-Iraq War of 1980– 88. The Iran-Iraq War ended on August 8, 1988. Iraq was left with huge debts, largely to other Arab nations that had helped to finance the war, and extensive material damage; however, the Iraqi military had benefited from the war by becoming the strongest military force in the Gulf region. Immediately following the cessation of the Iran-Iraq War, the Kuwaiti government made the disastrous decision to increase its oil production in violation of OPEC
(Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) agreements. The Kuwaitis increased oil extraction from the Rumaila oil wells, which lay on disputed territory with neighboring Iraq. Iraqi revenues were 90 percent dependent on oil, and the Kuwaiti increase in oil production helped to lower oil prices and slowly began to strangle Iraq economically. Kuwait’s leaders, the Al-Sabah family, ignored Iraq’s protestations. Until the early 20th century Kuwait had been a semi-independent emirate administered from Baghdad under the Ottoman Empire. During the 19th century British influence in the Gulf and in Kuwait in particular increased, and after World War I Britain was responsible for drawing the borders between the two nations. Although Iraq ultimately established diplomatic relations with Kuwait, many Iraqis continued to view it as part of Iraq. strategic access Iraq also owed $14 billion from the Iran-Iraq War to Kuwait; Iraq had expected that Kuwait would cancel the debt since Iraq had fought and suffered during the long war with Iran while the oil-rich nations in the region had helped to finance the struggle. However, Kuwait not only refused to cancel the debt, it demanded its immediate repayment. During the Iran-Iraq War many of Iraq’s limited port facilities in the Shatt al-Arab were destroyed, leaving Iraq almost landlocked. Kuwait had greater strategic access to the Persian Gulf, which Iraq viewed as essential were hostilities to erupt again with Iran. From 1988 to 1990, Saddam Hussein increased his threats against Kuwait, asking for cancellation of Iraq’s debts. He also sought help from King Hussein of Jordan to mediate the problems. In July 1990 Saddam met with U.S. ambassador April Glaspie and stated his grievances regarding Kuwait; Glaspie gave him a controversial response that he took to mean that the United States would not become involved in the dispute if he took stronger steps to rectify the problem. On August 2, 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. The Iraqi military quickly overran and occupied all of Kuwait, and the ruling family fled the country. Hussein justified the invasion based on Kuwait’s slant-drilling into Iraqi oil fields across the border, as well as his complaints over debt cancellation. He also appealed to Arab nationalism, claiming that Kuwait was part of Iraq, calling it the 19th province of Iraq. Immediately after the invasion the United Nations (UN) passed Resolution 660 condemning the invasion and demanding an immediate withdrawal. UN Resolution 661 then imposed economic sanctions on Iraq. Saudi Arabia was alarmed by the invasion and the mounting power of the Iraqi military, which was within
striking distance of the vast Saudi Hama oil wells. In Operation Desert Shield, begun on August 7, 1990, the U.S. military beefed up its forces in Arabia to defend its Saudi ally from a possible Iraqi attack. In addition, the UN placed a January 15, 1991, deadline for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait. The United States and the UN assembled a coalition force of 34 countries to implement this resolution by force should Iraq fail to comply. On January 12, 1991, the U.S. Congress narrowly approved the use of U.S. military force in an operation against Iraq. When Iraq failed to comply with the January 15 deadline, coalition forces initiated Operation Desert Storm on January 17, 1991, with a massive monthlong air campaign against Baghdad and much of Iraq. The air attacks, over 1,000 in number, disabled military and communication installations and severely weakened the Iraqi military and infrastructure. Coalition forces launched a ground attack, Operation Desert Sabre, on February 24, 1991; they quickly overwhelmed the thinly stretched Iraqi forces, and after only 100 hours President George H. W. Bush declared a cease-fire. Iraqi troops hastily retreated back across the border, setting Kuwaiti oil fields on fire as they withdrew. This caused massive environmental damage that persisted into the 21st century. Iraqi troops also dumped approximately 1 million tons of crude oil into the Persian Gulf. The quick victory was a surprise, and the war ended sooner than predicted. Kuwait City was recaptured, and on February 27, 1991, Kuwait was officially liberated and the Iraq-Kuwait border was restored. However, Saddam Hussein was not captured, and he remained in power. Allied forces did not pursue him and did not try to occupy Iraq, although they did advance to within 150 miles of the capital of Baghdad. President Bush justified this decision by noting that the goal of the coalition had been to liberate Kuwait. However, the U.S. administration hoped that continued economic sanctions against Iraq, as well as assistance for resistance groups within Iraq (such as Shi’i and Kurdish factions), would lead the Iraqi people to revolt against Hussein and oust him from power. But Hussein ruthlessly repressed any uprisings. Although the sanctions caused the deaths of an estimated 500,000 Iraqis, mostly women and children, they had little effect on Hussein’s regime, which actually extended its political control over a nation badly crippled by years of war. Thus the First Gulf War was a military success, succeeding in liberating Kuwait, but it did not change the Iraqi regime. Consequently the United States, Great Britain, and a small number of other
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nations moved to oust Hussein and occupy Iraq in the Second Gulf War, beginning in 2003. Further reading: Aburish, Said K. Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge. London: Bloomsbury, 2000; Sciolino, Elaine. The Outlaw State: Saddam Hussein’s Quest for Power and the Gulf Crisis. New York: John Wiley, 1991. Katie Belliel
Gulf War, Second (Iraq War) The invasion of Iraq officially began on March 20, 2003, under the name “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” The stated justification for the invasion was that Saddam Hussein, ruler of Iraq, had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and supported terrorism, and that the Iraqi people were suffering under his tyranny and needed to be freed. The United States contended that Iraq was in violation of both United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution 1441 and the terms of the 1991 cease-fire agreement, which ended hostilities after Desert Storm. Both of these documents prohibited Iraq from possessing or researching WMDs. Saddam’s links to terror were indirect and centered mostly on monetary rewards provided to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers and to the families of the “victims of Israeli aggression.” Allegations that Saddam was linked in some way to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were never supported by evidence. A “Coalition of the Willing” was created by the United States in the time after September 11, 2001 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003 though 98 percent of the Coalition troops were British and American. The Coalition forces assembled for the attack on Iraq numbered just under 300,000. The Iraqi army numbered 390,000 soldiers, plus 44,000 Fedayeen and potentially 650,000 reserves. The 2003 invasion was not preceded by an extended bombing campaign, as was the 1991 attack. The strategy for the 2003 invasion depended on speed and precision strikes to destroy Iraqi command rapidly enough to ensure that the defenses would quickly collapse. A primary strategic goal of the Coalition was to limit damage to Iraq’s oil production capability; key sites related to the oil industry were to be secured as quickly as possible. The course of the invasion was designed to prevent both the destruction of oil sites and to limit the Iraqi army’s ability to concentrate their defenses. The U.S. Army moved west through the Iraqi desert and then headed north toward Baghdad while the marines
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moved directly toward Baghdad along the main Iraqi Highway One. British forces concentrated on securing southeastern Iraq, particularly the Basra area. Major actions took place at Nasiriyah and Karbala where the Iraqis defended important crossroads and bridges over the Euphrates River. In the third week of the invasion, U.S. forces entered Baghdad. Raids called “Thunder Runs” were launched on April 5 and 7 to test Iraqi defenses in the capital and to capture the key objectives of the Baghdad Airport and Saddam’s palace complex. The city of Baghdad was formally occupied on April 9. Saddam was declared deposed and went into hiding, and many Iraqis rejoiced by defacing his monuments. The initial invasion had lasted a mere 21 days. Looting followed the fall of the regime, with store goods,
museum items, and military arms and equipment being targeted, as did outbreaks of violence between tribes and cities based on old grudges. Coalition troops began searching for Saddam, Iraqi politicians and leaders of the Ba’ath Party, military leaders, and Saddam’s family members. On July 22, 2003, Saddam’s sons Uday and Qusay, along with a grandson, were killed during a standoff at their fortified safe house in Mosul. Saddam was captured on December 13, 2003, near his hometown of Tikrit. In all, 300 top leaders from Saddam’s regime were killed or captured along with a large number of lower-level troops and government officials. After the fall of Baghdad and Saddam’s regime, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) was formed
Two U.S. Marines speak with a local Iraqi woman during a security patrol in Saqlawiyah, Iraq. The marines were assigned to Weapons Platoon, Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment.
to run Iraq until power could be turned over to the Iraqis. The CPA was led by Paul Bremer. The CPA officially controlled Iraq from April 21, 2003, until June 28, 2004. The CPA opposed holding elections in Iraq shortly after the fall of Saddam and wanted to hand power over to an appointed interim Iraqi government, which would be chosen by the Coalition. A second group formed in early 2003 was the Iraq Survey Group (ISG). The ISG was charged with finding the WMDs that Iraq was alleged to possess. They could not find any WMDs or programs to build them even though Iraq was known to have had nuclear, biological, ballistic missile, and chemical weapons programs prior to the 1991 Gulf War. The media explored a new format to cover the war by “embedding” journalists inside military units. The war also saw for the first time soldiers instantly reporting their activities by means of digital cameras, cell phones, and the Internet. Uncensored soldiers’ stories, photos, Web blogs, and movies became available shortly after events took place. Arabic news networks such as al Jazeera provided the Islamic viewpoint and was available worldwide though satellite TV and on the Internet. On May 1, 2003, major combat operations were declared over by U.S. president George W. Bush. Peace was short-lived, as a disjointed insurgency took hold in Iraq with many factions fighting for control. They included religious radicals, Fedayeen, Ba’athists, foreign Arabs, and other Muslim jihadis—and Iraqis opposed to the occupation. The insurgency was a chaotic decentralized movement with as many as 40 separate groups fighting for control. The picture was further clouded as each group was splintered into large numbers of semiautonomous cells. Insurgent attacks increased around Iraq, but especially in the “Sunni Triangle,” home to most of the Sunni population. Insurgents used guerrilla-style tactics, employing suicide bombs, mortars, rockets, ambushes, snipers, car bombs, sabotage of the infrastructure, and improvised explosive devices (IEDs). In late 2004 the focus of insurgent attacks switched from Coalition forces to the newly elected Iraqi government and its collaborators, including the Shi’i population. Many of the attacks were carried out by foreign fighters. At the end of March 2004 insurgents in the town of Fallujah ambushed and killed four private military contractors from the Blackwater USA Corporation. Pictures of their burned bodies hanging from a bridge were distributed around the world, causing outrage among Americans. Blackwater was one of many private companies that provided specialized services and expertise needed by the U.S. military. The employ-
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ees or contractors of these companies are typically men with special-forces or police backgrounds. They are paid much more money than they would make in the official armed forces. This has led many to label them “mercenaries.” It is believed that there were more than 100,000 private contractors in Iraq around 2007. Two fierce battles were fought after attacks were launched by the U.S. Marines to gain control of Fallujah after the Blackwater incident. The first battle in April 2004 was not successful and ended with the Marines withdrawing. The second battle, fought in November and December 2004, resulted in the death of more than 5,000 insurgents and the complete takeover of Fallujah. The battles for Fallujah are considered to be the heaviest urban fighting the U.S. Marines have done since the battle for Hue fought in Vietnam during 1968. On June 28, 2004, the CPA transferred sovereignty of Iraq to the Iraqi Interim Government, which was charged with holding national elections. The elected Iraqi government would then draft a new constitution. The Interim Government was also to try Saddam Hussein for his many crimes. At the end of his first trial, Saddam was sentenced to death for crimes against humanity and was executed by hanging on December 26, 2006. The Iraqi constitution was ratified on October 15, 2005, and a general election was held on December 15 to choose the new national assembly. In a first for Iraq, the constitution stipulated that 25 percent of the assembly seats must be held by women. An escalation in sectarian violence followed, as the Sunni minority feared their power slipping into the hands of the Shi’i majority. Sunni bombers destroyed a very important Shi’i mosque and ignited a cycle of revenge violence in which both sides used bombs, ambushes, and death squads against both politicians and civilians. Violence between the Shi’i and Sunni escalated to the point that the United Nations (UN) has labeled it an “almost civil war situation.” Many feared that this sectarian violence could spread to other countries in the Middle East, especially if Iraq was splintered into independent Sunni, Shi’i, and Kurdish states. Many of the opposition insurgents and suicide bombers were in fact foreign Sunni Arabs who came to Iraq to fight against the United States and against the Shi’i. One of the most notable foreign insurgent leaders was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Born in Jordan, he moved around the Middle East and Central Asia working as a terrorist and jihadi before taking leadership of alQaeda in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. He was killed on June 7, 2006, when his safe house located north of
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Baqubah was hit by smart bombs dropped by U.S. aircraft. Al-Qaeda has continued its violent campaign in Iraq. The war continued as 2007 saw a rising death toll. The number of Iraqis killed in the war is not known. Some estimates are as high as 900,000 Iraqi dead from all causes related to the war. In addition, an estimated 2 million Iraqis are said to have fled to Syria or Jordan. The number of Coalition forces killed is much clearer: more than 4,052 Americans and 309 other forces by
April 2008. Private contractors killed and wounded are not included in this figure and have not been published. Further Reading: Kegan, John. The Iraq War: The Military Offensive, from Victory in 21 Days to the Insurgent Aftermath. New York: Knopf, 2004; Shawcross, William. The Allies: The United States, Britain and Europe in the Aftermath of the Iraqi War. London: Atlantic, 2003. Collin Boyd
H Hamas Hamas—an acronym of Harakat al-Muqawama alIslamiyaa in Arabic, literally “Islamic Resistance Movement”—was both a part of a regionwide radical Islamic movement that developed in 1980s and an expression of the Palestinian struggle against Israeli domination and occupation. Hamas was established shortly after the outbreak of the first Intifada in the Gaza Strip in 1987. Its political program and ideology were drafted in lofty Arabic rhetoric and religious symbolism. Hamas believed that “the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day.” Hamas regarded nationalism (wataniya) as an implication of religious faith and struggle against the enemy as a religious duty. Hamas declared itself to be a “humanistic movement, which cares for human rights and is guided by Islamic tolerance when dealing with the followers of other religions.” According to its charter, “Under the wing of Islam it is possible for the followers of the three religions—Islam, Christianity and Judaism—to co-exist in peace and quiet.” Both its charter and many of its official statements are harsh and uncompromising. Hamas is divided into two main spheres of operation: social programs such as building schools, hospitals, clinics, and religious institutions; and militant operations. The Hamas underground militant operations included a number of suicide bombings that killed a few hundred Israeli soldiers and civilians, especially
in February and March 1996, and after the outbreak of the al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000. During this second intifada, when Palestinian towns and refugee camps were besieged by the Israeli army, Hamas organized clinics and schools that served Palestinians; it also summarily executed Palestinian collaborators with Israel. Many Hamas leaders and activists, including its founder, Sheikh Yassin, and his successor, Dr. Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, were assassinated by Israel during the so-called targeted killing operations. Its leader, Khaled Meshaal, lives in exile in Syria. The social programs and political and religious stance of Hamas contributed to its considerable popularity among the Palestinians. Hamas participated in the January/May 2005 Palestinian municipal elections and achieved control of some places such as Beit Lahya in northern Gaza, Qalqiliya in the West Bank, and Rafah. On January 25, 2006, Hamas won the parliamentary elections, taking 74 of 132 seats in the Palestinian parliament. After the elections Hamas faced considerable diplomatic and financial pressure to adjust its ideology to Western and Israeli demands. In June 2007 Hamas attacked their Fatah rivals, resulting in Hamas taking control of the Gaza Strip, while the West Bank remained under control of the Palestinanian National Authority. Further reading: Hroub, Khaled. Hamas: Political Thought and Practice. Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2000; Mishal, Shaul, and Avraham Sela. Palestinian Hamas: Vision, Violence, and Coexistence. New York: Columbia
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University Press, 2000; Nusse, Andrea. Muslim Palestine: The Ideology of Hamas. London: Routledge, 1998. Andrej Kreutz
Havel, Václav
(1936– ) Czech writer and president Václav Havel is a Czech dramatist, journalist, essayist, and former president of Czechoslovakia (1989–92) and of the Czech Republic (1993–2003). Havel was born in Prague in 1936 to a prosperous family. As a member of a former bourgeois family in a communist regime, Havel was denied privileges, including education. In order to finish high school he had to enroll in night school while supporting himself as a lab assistant. Afterward he was not permitted to enroll in a university. He trained for a short time at a technical institution and later completed his theater degree as a part-time student at the Academy of Arts. After his mandatory military service Havel worked first at the ABC Theater and then at the Theater on the Ballustrade, well known for experimental theater. Here, in the 1960s, Havel gained acclaim as a leader in the theater of the absurd in Czechoslovakia. Many of Havel’s plays were highly critical of the totalitarian state’s oppression of individual liberties. During the Prague Spring, a 1968 reform movement led by Alexander Dubˇcek, Havel played an important role. His outspoken support for human rights during the period earned him the antagonism of the communist government. When Warsaw Pact forces invaded Czechoslovakia in August 1968, Havel was prohibited from involvement in public affairs, and his plays were banned from performance or publication. In spite of this Havel continued to write, and his plays and books were published to acclaim in other countries. Continuing his work for human rights, Havel was arrested and imprisoned a number of times. He was placed under house arrest from 1977 to 1979. Havel tirelessly took up his protest work again. In 1989 he participated in a commemoration of the 1969 death of Czech student Jan Palach and was again imprisoned for several months. In the same year the Civic Forum, which Havel had helped establish, began a series of protests that overthrew the communist government in what has become known as the Velvet Revolution. In December a heavily Communist parliament chose Havel as the new interim president of Czechoslovakia. After national elections the new Federal Assembly reelected him in June 1990.
In 1993–98 Havel was elected president of the Czech Republic. During his 13 years as leader of postcommunist Czechoslovakia, Havel brought his country back into the mainstream of European politics. Havel negotiated the withdrawal of Soviet troops and forged friendships with the United States and European nations. The Czech Republic became a member of the Council of Europe, NATO, and the European Union. Further reading: Kriseova, Eda. Vaclav Havel: The Authorized Biography. Translated by Caleb Crain. Collingdale, PA: Diane Publishing Co., 1993; Pontuso, James F. Vaclav Havel: Civic Responsibility in the Postmodern Age (Twentieth-Century Political Thinkers). St. Charles, IL: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004. Jean Shepherd Hamm
Hizbollah Hizbollah (Party of God) is a political, military, and social Islamic Shi’i organization established in Lebanon in 1982. After the Israeli invasion of Lebanon that year, Shi’i Muslims—with the assistance of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard—formed Hizbollah to combat the Israeli occupation. In the mid-1980s the Hizbollah guerrillas, known as the Islamic Resistance, executed a series of operations against Israeli and U.S. targets to force the United States and Israel to withdraw all military presence from Lebanon. After the end of the Lebanese civil war (1975–90), the group focused its attacks on the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and the South Lebanon Army (SLA). The IDF and the SLA occupied an 850-square-kilometer stretch in south Lebanon known as the “security zone.” Hizbollah’s main aim was to liberate this area. In 1996, the United Nations (UN) sponsored the “April Accord,” legitimizing Hizbollah as a resistance movement. After the withdrawal of the IDF from southern Lebanon in May 2000, Hizbollah continued fighting the IDF around the disputed, Israeli-occupied Shaaba Farms area. Although the UN regarded Shaaba Farms as Syrian territory, Hizbollah considered the area part of Lebanon. Hizbollah also sought the release of Lebanese and Arab prisoners in Israel and followed a strategy of snatching IDF soldiers in Shaba Farms to exchange for prisoners. In addition to its military wing, Hizbollah maintains a civilian arm, which runs hospitals, schools, orphanages, and one television station—Al-Manar. Hizbollah
Ho Chi Minh
held 14 seats in the 128-member Lebanese Parliament in 2005. Hizbollah remains active in Shi’i-dominated areas in Lebanon—mainly the Bekaa Valley, the southern suburbs of Beirut, and southern Lebanon—and fought tenaciously against the Israeli attack on it and the invasion of Lebanon in the summer of 2006. See also Arab-Israeli War (1982). Further reading: Jaber, Hala. Hezbollah. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997; Saad-ghorayeb, Amal. Hizbu’llah, Politics and Religion. London: Pluto Press, 2002. Ramzi Abou Zeineddine
Ho Chi Minh
(1890–1969) Vietnamese communist leader Ho Chi Minh’s original name was Nguyen Ai Quoc. He fought against French rule over his country and afterward struggled against the United States in the Vietnam War. Combining his ideology of communism with love of his country, Ho left an indelible mark in history. He was born in the village of Kim Lien in Annam on May 19, 1890, and received education from his father, Nguyen Sinh Huy, as well as in the local school. He attended the National Academy school in Hue and then worked as a teacher in south Annam. After taking a course in navigation, Ho traveled to the West to find means for liberating Vietnam from French rule. He was appalled at the oppressive rule of the colonial masters and had a burning desire to free his country. Ho went to Marseilles in 1911 and after three years traveled to London, where he worked in the kitchen of the Carlton Hotel. He was a member of the Overseas Workers Association. Ho was in the United States for some time and then went to Paris and drifted toward socialism and Marxism and became one of the founding members of the French Communist Party after its split with the Socialist Party in 1920. He called for Vietnamese independence, convinced that the road to it was through the doctrine of Marxism-Leninism. Ho edited a journal, Le Pariah (The outcast), where he published articles on anticolonialism under the alias Nguyen Ai Quoc. He used many names before he took up the name of Ho Chi Minh in 1940. In 1922 he attended the fourth congress of the Comintern in Moscow, joined its Southeast Asia bureau, and took a leading part in the work of Krestintern (Peasant International). Playing a prominent role in the fifth congress as well, Ho advocated anticolonial revolution in Asia.
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He was not happy with the French Communist Party, which only made halfhearted attempts to oppose colonialism. Ho began to contact the Vietnamese exiles in Guangzhou (Canton) in southern China. After traveling to Brussels, Paris, and Bangkok, Ho went to Hong Kong and set up the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) on February 3, 1930. Its agenda was to end French rule in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam; nationalize the economy; and institute land reforms. In neighboring Laos and Cambodia, communist parties such as the Pathet Lao and the Khmer Rouge were set up. Until its formal disbanding in February 1951, the ICP under Ho took the lead in Vietnam’s struggle against French rule, where it organized party cells, trade unions, and peasants. Ho was in Moscow when World War II in Europe broke out on September 1, 1939. The war provided an opportunity to free Vietnam after the German victory over France that allowed Japan, Germany’s ally, to occupy Vietnam. In January 1941 Ho returned to Vietnam after 30 years in exile. He established the Vietnam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi (League for the Independence of Vietnam), or Vietminh. In the northern portion of Vietnam, liberated zones were set up near the Chinese border. Ho was arrested by the Chinese government and returned in 1944 to Vietnam after spending two years in jail. In August 1945 Ho called for a revolution, and the Vietminh took control of Hanoi on August 17. When Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, Ho immediately declared independence and formed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV, or North Vietnam). He remained president of North Vietnam until his death in 1969. A communist state, North Vietnam would be embroiled in cold war politics, war with France, and the struggle for unification of both the Vietnams after the French defeat. Ho relentlessly followed his objective to establish a unified communist Vietnam. After the breakdown of an agreement Ho had signed in Paris, the First Indochina War began. The Vietminh resorted to guerrilla warfare and by 1950 were in complete control of the northern portion of Vietnam. The United States, following a containment strategy in the cold war, gave military help to the French. The French-sponsored South Vietnam had been established in July 1949, which the United States recognized in 1950. The Soviet Union and China recognized the DRV. The collapse of French forces at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu on May 7, 1954, ended French colonial rule
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in Indochina, and Vietnam was divided in two at the 17th parallel. Ho’s dream of a unified Vietnam had not been realized, and he would fight against the United States in the Vietnam War. Although much of his country was devastated, Ho never wavered from the path toward his goal. Both Vietnams were unified in 1975, six years after Ho Chi Minh’s death. Further reading: Decaro, Peter Anthony. Rhetoric of Revolt: Ho Chi Minh’s Discourse for Revolution. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2003; Duiker, William J. Ho Chi Minh: A Life. Boston: Hyperion Books, 2000; Ho Chi Minh. Prison Diary. Hanoi: Foreign Language Publishing House, 1972; Ho Chi Minh. Selected Writings. Hanoi: Gioi Publishers, 1994. Patit Paban Mishra
Hong Kong The First Anglo-Chinese, or Opium, War ended in 1842 in total British victory and the cession by China of Hong Kong (several islands totaling 32 square miles on the tip of the Pearl River estuary) to Great Britain in the Treaty of Nanjing (Nanking). Hong Kong prospered and soon needed more room. Britain acquired the adjoining Kowloon Peninsula (opposite Victoria, the principal island of the colony) from China under the Treaty of Beijing (Peking) in 1860, and in 1898 it leased for 99 years additional land beyond Kowloon, called the New Territory. Britain would rule these 442 square miles of land (except for four years when it was under Japanese occupation between 1941and 1945) until 1997. Hong Kong was a free port and a hub of international trade in eastern Asia, and it provided refuge for Chinese revolutionaries led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, father of the Chinese Republic, and those fleeing the civil wars of the early republic. After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 and during the chaos of the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), millions of refugees found opportunities there and a haven from Communist-ruled China. Because the continuation of a British colony on the China coast offended Chinese nationalism, China demanded Hong Kong’s return. Negotiations between British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and Chinese paramount leader Deng Xiaoping (Teng Hsiaop’ing) culminated in an agreement in 1984 that would restore all the ceded and leased territories to China on
June 30, 1997. The agreement stipulated that Hong Kong would be ruled for 50 years as a Special Administrative Region (SAR) under a Basic Law that allowed it to maintain its own legislature, executive, and judiciary, currency, customs and police forces, flag, and passport. China would be responsible for its defense and foreign policy. Two other significant features of this agreement were: (1) Hong Kong would retain its capitalist and free-enterprise system and economic and financial structures; (2) The “One Country, Two Systems” arrangement would calm Hong Kong citizens’ fears of communism and perhaps lure the Republic of China on Taiwan to become part of the PRC. Britain made many reforms before 1997 that furthered the legal protection and self-governing rights of Hong Kong’s citizens. Nevertheless, several hundreds of thousands of them emigrated to Western countries before 1997. China appointed a prominent local businessman, Tung Chee-hwa, first chief executive of Hong Kong. Tung navigated a difficult path between the aspirations of Hong Kong’s residents for self-government and China’s demand for a final say in all major decisions affecting the SAR. China always prevailed. For example, in 1999 the Chinese National People’s Congress overruled the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeals on the right of abode for children with one Hong Kong parent. Tung resigned in 2005, two years before his second term ended, and was replaced by Donald Tsang, a respected high-ranking civil servant who had risen to prominence under British rule. The PRC remained leery of demands for human rights and democracy by Hong Kong’s citizens. After the opening of China in 1979, a strong economic bond developed between Hong Kong and China. They became each other’s foremost partners in investment and trade, initially limited to adjoining Guangdong (Kwangtung) province, and after 1992 spreading to other centers in China. While China needed Hong Kong’s managerial skills and capital, Hong Kong benefited from China’s deep, cheap labor pool. The SAR arrangement also applied to the former small Portuguese colony of Macao, but found no acceptance from the people or government of Taiwan. In 2005 Hong Kong had an estimated population of 6.8 million people who enjoyed one of the highest standards of living in Asia. See also Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China (1966–1976).
Horn of Africa
Further reading: He, R., ed. Hong Kong and the Handover. Boston: University Press of America, 1998; Patten, Christopher. East and West: China, Power and the Future of Asia. New York: Random House, 1998; Roberti, Mark. The Fall of Hong Kong: China’s Triumph and Britain’s Betrayal. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1994; Wang Gungwu and John Wong, eds. Hong Kong in China: The Challenge of Transition. Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1999. Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur
Horn of Africa Because of its strategic location near the Red Sea and the Arabian Peninsula, the Horn of Africa—currently composed of Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, and Djibouti—witnessed some of the most intense and violent geopolitical maneuvering during the cold war. Both the United States and the Soviet Union poured vast sums of money and weapons toward their allies in the region. The effects of the cold war in the region were often grave: The meddling of the superpowers disrupted the decolonization and modernization processes, intensified local rivalries, heightened resulting violence, and contributed to the deaths of many Africans. Although the Horn of Africa had long had global strategic value because of its location near the Strait of Bab al-Mandab, where the Red Sea narrows before opening into the Indian Ocean, its significance grew tremendously after World War II. This was because of two factors: The growing importance of the Middle East and its vast petroleum resources, and the increasing intensity of the zero-sum competition between the United States and the Soviet Union for influence around the world. The United States first established a presence in the Horn during World War II. In 1943 the United States constructed a radio communications station—called Radio Marina—near the town of Asmara in Eritrea, then under British control. The Horn and Radio Marina took on increasing importance as the contours of the oil-based postwar world and cold war rivalries took shape. The United States worried that losing influence in the Horn would destabilize the governments of allies in the region, interrupt shipping lanes, and possibly staunch the supply of Middle East oil to the West. The strategic significance of Radio Marina changed the course of both Eritrean and Ethiopian history. During the middle decades of the 20th century, Ethiopia was ruled by Emperor Haile Selassie, an autocrat who had first gained power in 1917. In the name of mod-
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ernizing Ethiopia, Selassie had dismantled the aristocracy and used the revenues gained from taxing coffee exports to centralize power. With aid from the United States Selassie continued to modernize Ethiopia and tighten his grip on power, which he would not yield until he was deposed in a coup in 1973. During the early postwar years the United States viewed the mostly Christian Ethiopia as the most stable and influential state in the entire Horn. Before World War II, however, the small, mostly Muslim sliver of land along the Red Sea known as Eritrea had not been part of the Ethiopian state. Unlike Ethiopia it had been colonized by Italy in the early 20th century and was controlled by the British during World War II. Despite this, after the war Eritrea found an unfavorable environment for independence. Two studies by the U.S.dominated United Nations (UN) found that Eritrea lacked national consciousness as well as the basis for a stable economy. In 1953 the UN established a federation in which Eritrea and Ethiopia were conjoined. In May 1953, five months after the Ethiopia-Eritrea federation was established, Ethiopia and the United States signed a 25-year arms-for-bases accord. In 1962 Selassie dissolved the federal system and absorbed Eritrea into Ethiopia. The result was a 30-year war between Eritrean nationalists and Addis Ababa, which ended with an Eritrean victory in 1991 and the establishment of an independent Eritrea in 1993. The 1953 deal became the foundation of a 25-year relationship between Washington and Selassie. Between 1953 and 1974 the United States gave more aid to Ethiopia than to any other country in sub-Saharan Africa. In 1958 the United States helped fund a modern air force; in 1960 it agreed to train and equip an army of 40,000; in 1966 it provided Ethiopia with a squadron of F-5 fighters. U.S. support strengthened Selassie’s hand against the numerous opposition groups that criticized his increasingly autocratic and corrupt administration. It also helped Salassie meet his nation’s top geopolitical interest, maintaining access to the Red Sea. In the 1970s the cold war landscape in the Horn changed dramatically. Several factors came together to end Selassie’s rule: a devastating famine mostly mishandled by the government, severe economic problems caused by the oil crisis, and Selassie’s own senility. The United States was trying to improve relations with Arab nations in the Middle East, many of whom opposed Christian-led Ethiopia. In 1973 a group of junior and noncommissioned army officers overthrew Selassie. Swayed by the radical thinking of the intelligentsia, this group, known as the Dergue (which
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means “committee”), pursued a Marxist agenda. After a transitory phase, in 1977 Mengistu Haile-Mariam, a hard-line radical, emerged as the leader of the new Ethiopia. Haile-Mariam nationalized many businesses and implemented a sweeping land reform program to undermine the power of the old ruling class, mercilessly repressed his political opponents, and cultivated closer ties with the Soviet Union. In 1975, taking advantage of the instability and immaturity of the regime in Addis Ababa, the Somalian government launched a military offensive against Ethiopia. A mostly pastoral society, Somalia had not fared well in a modern world organized by agricultural and industrial nation-states. In 1960, after the newly independent British Somaliland merged with Italian Somaliland to become the Somali Republic, many within the new nation hoped to reunite with Somalis across the border in Ethiopia. In 1969 a coup organized by Major General Mohamed Siad Barre replaced the parliamentary system with a Soviet-style democratic republic run by a Supreme Revolutionary Council. Fueled by a massive arms buildup funded by the Soviet Union, Siad Barre maintained the long-standing hope of bringing together all Somalis under one government. Siad Barre’s government spearheaded the mid-1970s war with Ethiopia, which ended when Somalia withdrew in 1978. A reshuffling of cold war alliances accompanied internal political changes during the 1970s. In response to the radicalism of Mengistu Haile-Mariam, newly elected U.S. president Jimmy Carter suspended U.S. aid to Ethiopia, hoping that the situation would soon change, but, offered Somalia “defensive” weapons and incorporated the country into the U.S. security network. U.S. assistance to Somalia in the 1980s totaled $37 million. Similar political gymnastics occurred in Moscow. Although an ally of the Siad Barre government in Somalia, Moscow labeled its attack on Ethiopia aggression and began to support the new regime in Addis Ababa. During the early 1990s, as the cold war ended, the Horn of Africa underwent yet another round of sweeping political changes. In Ethiopia severe economic problems and sustained rebellions in various parts of the country brought about the collapse of the Dergue. In May 1991, after a final push by the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF), Ethiopia came into the hands of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front. Meanwhile, in Eritrea, the Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front (EPLF) seized control. Two years later they formalized independence with a referendum. The late 1980s found Somalia in a state of instability as numerous factions competed
for state control without any clear victor. After Siad Barre was toppled in 1991, Mogadishu fell into a state of civil war. During the second half of the 20th century the people living in the Horn of Africa witnessed repeated changes in the political configuration ruling Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia. The intense rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union shaped these changes in profound ways. Such external influence sharpened divisions within the Horn and intensified the conflicts. International rivalries also combined with local dynamics—such as the long-standing imperial relationship of Ethiopia with its neighbors, the legacy of previous European colonialism in the area, and the personal and ideological agendas of local leaders such as Haile Salassie, Haile-Mariam, and Siad Barre—to shape the fate of this important region. Further reading: Korn, David. Ethiopia, The United States, and the Soviet Union. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986; Lefebvre, Jeffrey. Arms for the Horn: U.S. Security Policy in Ethiopia and Somalia, 1953–1991. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991; Westad, Odd Arne. The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Thomas Robertson
Hu Jintao (Hu Chin-t’ao) (1942– ) Chinese politician
Elected president of the People’s Republic of China on March 15, 2003, Hu Jintao was born in December 1942 in Shanghai. He is the first Chinese leader whose career began after the communist victory of 1949. Hu became active in the Communist Youth League while in high school and graduated with a degree in hydraulic engineering. He worked for a hydropower station in Gansu and then, from 1969 to 1974, worked as an engineer for Sinohydro Engineering Bureau. In 1974 Hu transferred to the construction department at Gansu. Within a year he earned a promotion to vice senior chief and met up with Song Ping, who would become his mentor. With Song’s help he took over as deputy director of Gansu’s Ministry of Construction in 1980. In 1981 Hu embarked on training at the Central Party School in Beijing. His political career advanced rapidly when Deng Xiaoping named him to the Politburo Standing Committee in 1992.
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Further reading: Cheng, Tun-Jen, Jacques Delisle, and Deborah Brown. China Under Hu Jintao: Opportunities, Dangers, and Dilemmas. Hackensack, NJ: World Scientific Publishing Company, 2005; Kien-Hong, Peter Yu. Hu Jintao and the Ascendency of China: A Dialectical. Singapore: Eastern University Press, 2005; Zhang, Andy. Hu Jintao: Facing China. New York: Writers Club Press, 2002. Matthew H. Wahlert
Hu Yaobang (Hu Yao-pang) (1915–1989) Chinese politician
Hu Jintao pictured during a defense meeting held in Washington, D.C., when he was vice president of the People’s Republic of China.
Hu’s meteoric career rise continued with his appointment as governor of Guizhou (Kweichow) province in 1985. In 1988 he took over as party chief of the Tibet Autonomous Region at a time of great political turmoil. Hu ordered and led a political crackdown in Tibet in early 1989. During the 14th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), his name emerged as a potential future leader. In his 50s, he became the youngest member of the seven-person Politburo Standing Committee. In 1993 he became secretariat of the CPC Central Committee, and vice president of China in 1998. Hu ascended to the office of party general secretary at the 16th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 2002, at a time of immense change for China. Economically, politically, and socially, China faced difficult issues, including the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing and the uncertainty of a rapidly globalizing economy.
Hu Yaobang was born to a peasant family in Hunan Province and joined the Chinese Communist forces at age 14. He became a party member in 1933. He became a protégé of Deng Xiaoping after serving under him in the Chinese Red Army, although they had many differences of opinion on political and philosophical issues. After the formation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Hu held many positions within the national government. Hu became head of the Communist Party’s Propaganda Department, then became general secretary in 1980 and chair in 1981. Hu attempted to create a more flexible, less dogmatic government that would seek practical and flexible solutions to particular problems rather than relying on rigid applications of Maoist ideology. He was also a strong champion of reform and democratization within the party and oversaw the rehabilitation of thousands of people, from party leaders to ordinary Chinese citizens, who had been unjustly exiled or imprisoned. Hu was forced to resign in 1987 and compelled to sign a statement of “self-criticism,” accepting responsibility for his failure to crack down on a series of student protests the previous year. He retained his seat on the Politburo, however, until he died of a heart attack two years later. His death on April 15, 1989, sparked the Tiananmen Square Democracy Movement, which began with public protests and a hunger strike by thousands of students in Tiananmen Square in central Beijing. The protesters were brutally suppressed by the Chinese government, culminating in what is now termed the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4, 1989. Further reading: Hutchings, Gordon. Modern China: A Century of Change. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001; Meisner, Maurice J. The Deng Xiaoping Era: An Inquiry into the Fate of Chinese Socialism, 1978–1994. New
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York: Hill and Wang, 1996; Yang, Zhong Mei. Hu Yao Bang: A Chinese Biography. Timothy Cheek, ed., with a foreword by Rudolf G. Wagner. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1988. Sarah Boslaugh
Huk Rebellion The Huk Rebellion was a leftist, rurally based armed rebellion in the Philippines, first against Japan and later against the newly independent, U.S.-supported Filipino government. Its main objective was independence and a more equitable society. The movement blossomed during World War II, dissipated in the mid1950s, then returned during the late 1960s. The Hukbalahap, or Huks, originated during World War II to liberate the Philippines from Japanese control. Hukbalahap is a contraction of the Tagalog phrase “Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon,” which means “People’s Anti-Japanese Army.” (Japan had taken control of the archipelago nation by defeating U.S.-Filipino forces in 1941.) The Huks found a base of support among the peasants of central Luzon, where approximately 80 percent of local farmers lived under oppressive debt. Led by the socialist Luis Taruc, they advanced an agenda of nationalism and agrarian reform. Taruc had worked as a peasant organizer in the Pampanga region during the 1930s. Throughout the war the Huks trained local farmers in political theory and fighting strategy. By the end of the conflict the Huks could claim roughly 15,000 armed soldiers and many supporters. Obtaining their weapons mostly from retreating Filipino soldiers, old battlefields, and downed planes, they used their power to block Japanese food and military supplies and to interrupt the collection of taxes. Besides earning widespread popular support, the Huks developed communication networks and fighting tools that would serve them well in later years. After U.S.-led forces recaptured Luzon from the Japanese in February 1945, the Huks looked forward to independence as promised by the Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1934. They formed a political party and won a number of elections in 1947, but were denied their rightful seats in parliament. In response they once again returned to the mountains and took up arms. In November 1948 the Huks renamed themselves “Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan,” or People’s Liberation Army. The Huks came close to toppling the government in 1950. However, under the leadership of Ramon
Magsaysay, the Filipino government was able to turn the tide on the Huks. Magsaysay pursued a two-pronged approach, combining vigorous military action with successful efforts to reform the army. When Taruc surrendered in 1954, the movement ended. Magsaysay’s campaign became the model for U.S. efforts in Vietnam. Rural discontent once again pushed the Huks to take up arms against the government in the late 1960s. In August 1969 however, President Ferdinand Marcos, with the aid of the U.S. government, launched a military campaign that crushed them. Further reading: Brands, H. W. Bound to Empire: The United States and the Philippines. New York: Oxford, 1992; Kerkvliet, Benedict. The Huk Rebellion: A Study of a Peasant Revolt in the Philippines. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977; Taruc, Luis. Born of the People. Bombay: People’s Publishing House, LTD, 1953; Zaide, Sonia M. The Philippines: A Unique Nation. Manila: All Nations Publishing, 1999. Thomas Robertson
Hundred Flowers Campaign in China (1956–1957) Between 1949, when it came to power, and 1957, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) completed land reform and eliminated domestic opposition. As a result of the First Five-Year Plan, it had collectivized agriculture and advanced industries. Chairman Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) believed that most intellectuals supported his goals, but feared that there was resistance among the 100,000 or so “higher intellectuals” who had been Western trained. To arouse their enthusiasm Mao and Premier Zhou Enlai (Chou En-lai) decided in 1956 to embark on a campaign to “Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools contend.” This term was borrowed from the Hundred Schools of Thought era of the late Zhou (Chou) dynasty, circa 500 b.c.e., when many philosophies developed. Its goal was to gain the intellectuals’ cooperation by permitting some debate and to allow them to question the competence of party cadres to direct science and technology. Cadres, too, were encouraged to criticize the system under which they worked. The critics were encouraged by some liberalization in the Soviet Union after Nikita Khrushchev began de-Stalinization in 1956. Some were inspired by the May Fourth Movement and Intellectual Revolution in
Hungarian revolt (1956)
China in 1919. Many, however, were inspired by Marxist-Leninist ideals and thought it their duty to point out where the party had deviated. Most sought to express their criticism within the limits of the system, such as the writer-journalist and CCP member Liu Binyan (Liu Pinyen), whose newspaper articles described the divergence between bureaucratic mismanagement and communist ideals. By 1957 university students, too, had become involved, led by those in National Beijing (Peking) University, whose predecessors had led the May Fourth Movement. They put up posters protesting the politicization of academic life on a Democracy Wall. The leaders of the CCP were, however, unprepared for the extent and bitterness of the criticism by writers, scientists, and social scientists. In July 1957 Mao reversed himself, stating that intellectual freedom was only permissible if it strengthened socialism. He denounced those who had spoken out in the Hundred Flowers campaign as “rightists,” “counter-revolutionaries,” and “poisonous weeds.” Many senior CCP leaders had never endorsed the campaign and supported the crackdown. By the end of the year the anti-rightist campaign was in full swing, and more than 300,000 intellectuals had been condemned and sent to jail or labor camps, humiliated by public denunciations, and forced to make confessions. Their careers were ended. Countless bright students and young cadres never got a chance for a career as a result of their participation. Some were executed. The swing of the pendulum to severe repression was sharp and unrelenting. It reflected the insecurity of the CCP leaders and their fear of freedom. See also Great Leap Forward in China (1958–1961). Further reading: MacFarquhar, Roderick. The Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Chinese Intellectuals. New York: Praeger, 1960; MacFarquhar, Roderick, and John K. Fairbank, eds. Cambridge History of China. Vol. 14, The People’s Republic of China, Part 1: The Emergence of Revolutionary China, 1949–1965. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987; Mu Fu-sheng. The Wilting of the Hundred Flowers: The Chinese Intelligentsia Under Mao. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1962. Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur
Hungarian revolt (1956) In 1956, Hungary was a nation of 9 million. Allied to Germany during World War II, it was occupied by Soviet troops in 1944–45. Hungarian Communists
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began the process that by the late 1940s would give them control over the government. By that time, Hungary’s government had undergone changes that ensured that the leadership strictly followed directives from the Soviet Union. The first Communist leader, from 1949 to the early 1950s, was the hard-liner Laszlo Rajk. He, in turn, was replaced on Moscow’s orders by an equally harsh leader, Mátyás Rákosi. While the imposition of Communist rule in Hungary was particularly repressive, it was applied with force throughout Eastern Europe into the early 1950s. At that time, a series of events took place that indicated restrictions from the Soviet Union and internal restrictions might be loosening. The first event was the death of Stalin in 1953. A slight thaw and liberalization followed in both the Soviet Union and the satellite states. There were changes in the internal policies in the East European states. Hard-liners died mysteriously, and in countries where rebellions against the Soviets had been put down, there seemed to be a certain degree of liberalization. Closer to home, there seemed to be a change in Hungary’s direction. Rákosi was pushed aside and a moderate, Imre Nagy, was brought in to take his place. Nagy left this position in 1955 and his predecessor, Rákosi, returned. In July 1956 Nikita Khrushchev suggested to Rákosi that he should visit Moscow. Nagy was back in, but left the government after a very short while. This is when the troubles began. On October 23, 1956, students demanded that Nagy return to the government. The students were fired on by the police, and on the following day martial law was declared. Soviet troops in Hungary put down the increasing number of riots and demonstrations. The violence escalated until October 28, when Nagy returned to the government, a cease-fire was signed, and the Soviet troops withdrew from Budapest. In the next week Nagy and the newly formed government began making changes that alarmed not only hard-line Hungarian Communists but the leadership in Moscow as well. Political prisoners were released and the one-party system was ended. Most serious, however, was the statement made that Hungary would begin withdrawing from the WarSaw Pact. Khrushchev ordered the Soviet army to commence Operation Whirlwind, a strong military response to the rebellion. Whirlwind commenced on November 4 and lasted until November 12. It was a Soviet-only operation, as the 120,000-man Hungarian army was not trusted politically. Most of the fighting took place in the streets of Budapest.
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There was a political movement as well. János Kádár arrived in Budapest on November 7. He was a long-time Communist operative with a history of being in and out of power. When the revolt began, Kádár left Budapest and went to the Soviets, formally asking them to intervene in ending the disorder. Coming from a member of the Hungarian government, this request reinforced the impression of the legitimacy of the Soviet intervention. In the end, the Soviet army saw 700 men killed and approximately 1,500 wounded. Three thousand Hungarians died, most in Budapest. Many thousands of Hungarians left the country, first to Austria, where refugee camps were set up, and then later to the United States, Canada, France, and Britain. political order As the Soviet Army put an end to the rebellion, Kádár, assisted by the Soviet ambassador Yuri Andropov, restored political order. Nagy was taken by the Soviets and executed in 1958. Kádár’s rule was, at first, characterized by harshness and reprisals against anyone who participated. In the following years, however, Kádár liberalized the regime, instituting what Khrushchev and others contemptuously referred to as “Goulash Communism.” Kádár did not look for loyalty so much as conformity. Hungary, in relation with other members of the Warsaw Pact in the 1960s–1980s, was very liberal. By 1989 it had the most advanced economy in eastern Europe. Authors did not have to submit their works to a censor prior to publication, but those who crossed the unstated line could still find themselves in trouble. The United States government, which many considered to have instigated the rebellion through Radio Free Europe broadcasts, had decided that the potential for a nuclear war outweighed the benefits of assisting the Hungarians. From 1956 on, American diplomatic talk of rolling back communism was replaced with the phrase “containment.” Although Khrushchev succeeded in reestablishing the Communist government, his indecisiveness and actions prior to the rebellion damaged his credibility. It took the prodding of many within the Soviet government to make him act, and the fact that he had had to fly to Yugoslavia to get Tito’s approval before intervening led many to question his leadership. In 1957 an attempt was made to replace him, which failed. His continued problems in foreign policy, however, finally led to his ouster in 1964. By 1989 there were significant changes. In April the Hungarian government tore down the barbed wire
fences on its frontier with Austria. In June that same year, 200,000 Hungarians attended the reburial of Imre Nagy from a common grave to a place of honor. See also Prague Spring. Further reading: Gaddis, John Lewis. The Cold War: A New History. New York: Penguin Press, 2005; Granville, Johanna C. The First Domino: International Decision Making during the Hungarian Crisis of 1956. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004; James, Beverly A. Imagining Postcommunism: Visual Narratives of Hungary’s 1956 Revolution. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2005. Robert Stacy
Hussein, Saddam
(1937–2006) Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was born in Al Awja near Tikrit, Iraq, to a poor family. He was raised mostly by an uncle and attended school in Baghdad. As a young man he joined the Ba’ath Party. After Hussein was involved in an abortive attempted to assassinate Abdul Karim Qassem, the leader of the 1958 Iraq revolution, he fled to Egypt, where he studied law. When the Ba’ath seized power in 1963, he returned to Iraq but was soon imprisoned for another attempt to overthrow the regime. He escaped from prison in 1966 and was elected assistant general secretary of the Ba’ath. Under the patronage of Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, to whom he was related by blood, Hussein rose in power following the 1968 Ba’athist-led coup. In 1975 Hussein and Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi signed the Algiers Accord, which led to the Iran-Iraq Treaty of International Boundaries and Good Neighborliness, whereby the eastern portion of the Shatt al Arab was ceded to Iran. The agreements were a victory for Iran, and Hussein subsequently argued that Iraq had only signed under duress. In 1979 Hussein ousted the ailing al-Bakr and assumed leadership of the Ba’ath Party and the nation. He emulated the Stalinist approach to government, establishing a totalitarian state based on a cult of personality. He ruthlessly purged possible dissidents within the Ba’ath Party, closely controlled the media and communications systems, and had the populace—especially the youth—indoctrinated in loyalty to himself. Although not a professional soldier, Hussein often appeared in military uniform, and he curried favor with the army. His regime was a secular one, and he closely monitored
A mural of former Iraqi leader and supreme military commander Saddam Hussein painted on a wall in rural Iraq.
Shi’i clerics and Islamist movements. He appointed relatives and close associates from Tikrit to key government positions and demanded absolute loyalty. However, his regime also improved education, healthcare services, and the status of women. Hussein initiated the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) ostensibly to recover the Shatt al Arab but also to contain the Shi’i-led Iranian revolution. The resulting war of attrition led to massive human, military, and economic losses for both sides. Neighboring Arab nations in the Gulf and Saudi Arabia, fearing the export of the Iranian revolution, assisted Iraq with loans and aid. From the Iraqi perspective the Arab regimes were paying for the war with money, and Iraq was paying with the blood of its soldiers. After the war Hussein downplayed his former secularism and adopted a more Islamic approach. He also launched major offensives, including the use of poison gas, against Kurdish forces in northern Iraq. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, a major ally, Iraq became more isolated and found it increasingly difficult to obtain loans or assistance to rebuild its war-torn economy. Hussein also recognized the mounting hostility of his former Arab allies and resented the refusal of Kuwait to forgive wartime loans. He also accused Kuwait of illegally slant-drilling for petroleum into Iraq. In August 1990, he ordered the invasion of Kuwait.
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Kuwait quickly fell to the Iraqi forces and was incorporated into Iraq. The international community, including the Arab world, condemned the invasion and after a month of massive aerial bombardment in the so-called First Gulf War, coalition forces, led by the United States, moved into Kuwait. The Iraqi army crumbled and hastily retreated. The coalition established no-fly zones that essentially created an autonomous Kurdish region in the north. However, Hussein crushed uprisings, especially among the large and disaffected Shi’i population in southern Iraq. Iraq managed to rebuild much of its infrastructure, and water and electricity services were restored to major cities. In spite of a decade of international sanctions that resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of mostly civilian Iraqis, Hussein clung to power. International diplomacy and arms inspections resulted in the demilitarization and destruction of most of the Iraqi military arsenal, but although severely weakened, the military remained intact. Hussein’s sons Uday and Qusay became increasingly powerful during the 1990s, and their erratic behavior and violence terrorized those around them. Saddam Hussein’s regime was overthrown in the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq (the Second Gulf War). As U.S. forces entered Baghdad many leaders of the regime, including Hussein and his sons, went into hiding. His sons were found and killed, and U.S. forces ultimately captured Hussein, who was then put on trial for crimes committed during his rule. During the protracted trial, Hussein adopted a belligerent tone, maintaining that he was still the legitimate ruler of Iraq, but he was found guilty and executed. A new Iraqi regime was established, and the Ba’ath Party was banned from holding positions in government or schools. The Iraqi army was also disbanded, but the nation continued to face tremendous economic and social problems as sectarian fighting broke out and massive opposition to foreign occupying forces erupted throughout much of the country. Further reading: Aburish, Said K. Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge. London: Bloomsbury, 2000; Karsh, Efraim, and Inari Rautsi. Saddam Hussein: A Political Biography. New York: Free Press, 1991; Sluglett, Marion-Farouk, and Peter Sluglett. Iraq Since 1958. London: I.B. Tauris, 2001. Janice J. Terry
I India India became an independent nation on August 15, 1947, with the end of British colonial rule. With a population of 1,095,351,995 (July 2006 estimate), India is the second most populous nation after China. It is the seventh-largest nation in land area in the world, covering 3,287,590 square kilometers. It borders Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, China, Nepal, and Pakistan. It presents considerable ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity. India has 18 officially recognized languages and about 1,600 dialects. Hindus form 83.5 percent of the total population. After Indonesia, India has the second-largest number of Muslims, who constitute 13 percent of the population. The partition of the British Empire into India and Pakistan created problems for both countries, a legacy that continues. India faced problems including the merger of princely states, an influx of refugees from Pakistan, communal riots, the division of assets, and war with Pakistan. The 562 independent princely states were given the choice to merge with either India or Pakistan. Vallabhbhai Patel (1875–1950), the home minister, was the architect of the merger of these states. Hyderabad and Junagarh were annexed when their rulers did not select the option of merging with India. War broke out over the state of Jammu and Kashmir, whose ruler, Maharaja Hari Singh (1895–1961), had signed the Instrument of Accession with the governorgeneral of India, Lord Louis Mountbatten (1900–79) on October 26, 1947. Despite opposition, Prime Minister
Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) took the matter to the United Nations, which called for a cease-fire on August 13, 1948. It called for a plebiscite to determine the desire of the people of the state. The hostilities were over by December 31, 1948, and the demarcation line became the Line of Control (LOC) between the two countries. India also was getting ready to prepare a constitution, and B. R. Ambedkar (1891–1956) was appointed chairperson of the Drafting Committee on August 29, 1947. On November 26, 1949, the Constituent Assembly adopted the constitution. India became a sovereign democratic republic on January 26, 1950, when the constitution came into effect. Rajendra Prasad (1884–1963) became the first president of India, which adopted a parliamentary form of government. In 1952 the first general elections were held, and the Indian National Congress (INC), under Nehru, formed the government. Nehru left an indelible mark on modern Indian history with his belief in a parliamentary form of democracy, a socialist pattern of society, secularism, equality before the law, and nonalignment. He believed that India could play a meaningful role at the time of cold war. Imbued with a high dose of idealism, India pursued a dynamic policy in international politics. Acting as intermediary, India contributed to a lessening of tensions by hosting conferences like the Asian Relations Conference in 1947 and the Conference on Indonesia in 1949. The Bandung Conference (1955) was the high-water mark in Indian diplomacy. India became the chair of the peacekeeping machinery, the International Control Commission, after the end of 201
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Indians bathe in the Ganges River, a sacred rite. India’s history is mixed with religion, as in the partition into Pakistan and Bangladesh, and the continuing border conflicts that occur today.
the First Indochina War (1946–54). Nehru also played a pivotal role in establishing the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961. India had maintained friendly relations with China and signed a friendship treaty in 1954. But there were boundary disputes with China, which resulted in the Sino-Indian War of October 1962. India’s humiliating defeat was a great shock to Nehru, and Indian foreign policy lost its momentum. A planning commission was set up in 1950 headed by Nehru. Large sectors of the economy were modernized. The new policies aimed for an increase in agricultural productivity and industrialization within the framework of a socialist pattern of society. The government engaged itself in manufacturing, railways, aviation, electricity, communication, and infrastructural activities. The Indian Institutes of Technology, In tune with the scientific temperament of Nehru, research and educational institutions were established. Attempts also were made to change the social sector through legislation in parliament.
Lal Bahadur Shastri (1904–66) became the next premier. The debacle for India in the Sino-Indian War of 1962 and the death of Nehru prompted Pakistan to wage another war. The Indian army crossed the border, bringing Lahore under Indian artillery fire. A cease-fire was called by the United Nations on September 22, 1965. The Tashkent Agreement was signed on January 10, 1966, and the cease-fire line (CFL) became the de facto border between the countries. With the initiation of Indira Gandhi as prime minister, another important era began in contemporary Indian history. Daughter of Nehru, she was prime minister of India twice, between 1966 and 1977 and again from 1980 to 1984. She unleashed a program of Garibi Hatao (abolish poverty), supported the Indochinese people in the Vietnam War, and moved closer to the Soviet Union with the signing of a 20-year treaty in August 1971. The liberation war in East Pakistan had started, and India was facing problems arising out of the exodus of 10 million refugees to provinces in eastern India. War became inevitable. On
December 3, the air force of Pakistan began preemptive air strikes on eight Indian airfields. The Pakistan army surrendered on December 16 in Dhaka. The Shimla Accords prevented outbreaks of any major conflict between the two countries until 1999. Scientific development went forward at a tremendous speed with the launch of a satellite into space. In May 1974 India successfully carried out an underground nuclear explosion at Pokhran. The program of the Green Revolution, which utilized new types of seeds, resulted in greater agricultural productivity and self-sufficiency in food production. There were demonstrations and strikes in protest against inflation and the poor standard of living. Indira Gandhi also was found guilty of violating election laws and she imposed a state of national emergency on June 26, 1975. Fundamental rights were suspended, censorship was imposed on the press, and opposition leaders were put behind bars. When Gandhi called for elections two years afterward, the Congress Party was badly trounced, and the combined opposition, the Janata Party, came into power. Morarji Desai (1896–1995), the first non-Congress prime minister of India, headed a coalition that lasted for two years. The mutual bickering among coalition partners and unsolved economic problems witnessed the return of Gandhi to power with a large majority in January 1980. The rise of militancy in the Punjab was crushed by the Indian security forces, but Gandhi paid with the loss of her life at the hands of her Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984. The violence that erupted against the Sikhs created another dark chapter in Indian history. Rajiv Gandhi (1944–91), the son of Indira Gandhi, was the next prime minister, and he took the country toward economic reforms and expansion of the telecommunication sector and information technology (IT). India became involved in the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. The Indo–Sri Lankan Peace Accords were signed in 1987, and the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) was dispatched to Sri Lankan. Rajiv Gandhi was charged with corruption and the Congress lost the elections of November 1989. He was assassinated by a Sri Lankan suicide bomber in 1991. The history of India since the last decade of the 20th century has been marked by the menace of terrorism, major economic reforms, tackling poverty, tremendous growth in IT, reservation to backward classes, and becoming a nuclear nation. The Janata Party ministry of Vishwanath Pratap Singh (1931– ) lasted less than a year, but reactions to the affirmative
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action by his government of reserving jobs and seats in educational institutions for lower classes divided India along caste lines. Politicians like Singh and others jettisoned merit-based awards for the quota system. Even after more than five decades of reservation, the various governments retained this system. The government of Manmohan Singh (1932– ) reserved seats for lower classes in some of the premier institutions of the country. India shifted from its decade-old centralized planning model to a market-driven economy and joined the mainstream of globalization on an international level at the time of the Congress ministry of P. V. Narasimha Rao (1921–2004). Indian workers were sought after in IT fields globally. The educational infrastructure had developed so as to produce one of the world’s largest concentrations of technical personnel. There had been communal violence between Hindus and Muslims following the demolition of the Babri mosque in 1992 over the question of the birthplace of the Hindu god Ram in Ayodhya. Violence again erupted in 2002 after a train fire in Godhra, Gujarat, resulting in the massacre of Hindus and Muslims alike. Relations with Pakistan deteriorated over Kashmir, which has remained one of the major sources of conflict between the two countries. The conflict assumed dangerous proportions with the specter of a nuclear conflict after the Kargil War of 1999. Prime Minister Shri Vajpayee and the Pakistan premier Nawaz Sharif (1949– ) signed the Lahore Declaration in February 1999 to solve the Kashmir problem. But the fourth war between the two countries began on May 8 and lasted for 73 days. In spite of the odds, India maintained a democratic system. The country maintains steady economic growth and a reduction in the poverty level. India also is striving for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Further reading: Brown, Judith M. Nehru: A Political Life. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004; Hasan, Mushirul. The Nehrus Personal Histories. New Delhi: Roli, 2006; Kamath, P. M., ed. India-Pakistan Relations, Courting Peace from the Corridors of War. New Delhi: Promilla, 2005; Schofield, Victoria. Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War. London: I.B. Tauris and Company, 2002; United Nations Development Program. Human Development Report 2004. New York: UNDP, Hoechstetter Printing Co., 2004; Varma, Pavan K. Being Indian: The Truth About Why The 21st Century Will Be India’s. New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2004. Patit Paban Mishra
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Indochina War (First and Second) The French colonization of Indochina—consisting of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia—was completed when Laos became a French protectorate in 1893. World War II opened new avenues for anticolonial movements in Southeast Asia. In the wake of the Japanese occupation of Indochina, the Vietnamese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969) set up the Vietnam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi (League for the Independence of Vietnam), or Vietminh. He gave the call in August 1945 to liberate Vietnam. The Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), or North Vietnam, was established on September 2, 1945, after the formal Japanese surrender on the same day. Laos and Cambodia did likewise. But the French were in no mood to give up Indochina. The Vietminh was ordered by the French to lay down arms, but they attacked the French troops in Hanoi on December 19, 1946. Thus the First Indochina War began. The Khmer Issarack, the Free Khmers of Son Ngoc Thanh (1907–76), were aligned with the Vietminh. In Laos, the Pathet Lao under Souphanouvong (1901–95) also fought against the French. The three communist factions formally formed the Viet-KhmerLao alliance on March 11, 1951. In the cold war period, the United States followed a containment strategy and helped France by giving it military aid. It amounted to 85 percent of the French Indochinese budget, and it provided up to 40 percent of the military budget of France during the First Indochina War by 1952. In March 1949 the southern part of Vietnam became an associate state within the French Union, along with Laos and Cambodia. By 1950 South Vietnam had been recognized by the United States and Great Britain. The establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 was very favorable to the DRV. China recognized the government of Hanoi and supplied military matériel according to an agreement of April 1, 1950. The Soviet Union and its East European allies also recognized the DRV. The actual combatants in the First Indochina War were the Vietminh, the Pathet Lao, and the Khmer Issarack fighting against the French. The Vietminh resorted to guerrilla warfare. By 1950 the Vietminh had established complete control over the northern free zone, and the communists had strengthened their position in Laos and Cambodia. The commander in chief of the Vietminh, Vo Nguyen Giap (1911– ), was an expert on modern guerrilla warfare and led the army of Vietnam from its inception. His strategy of dispersing French troops and capturing
weak outposts had paid off well. By 1952 half of the villages of the Red River Delta were under his control. The war was becoming unpopular in France, with a heavy loss of men from the French Expeditionary Corps and matériel. General Henri Navarre (1898–1983), the commander of the French forces, had captured the town of Dien Bien Phu, 16 kilometers from the Lao border, in November 1953. Navarre established a fortified camp and was convinced of a North Vietnamese attack so as to open the road to Laos. Giap did not make any assault and instead surrounded the camp with about 50,000 soldiers of the Vietnamese People’s Army. The siege of Dien Bien Phu began on March 13, 1954, and 11,000 French troops were entrapped. The Vietminh artillery cut off the supply by air to the French troops. french surrender On May 7 Dien Bien Phu fell, and the next day the Geneva Conference on Indochina began. The Geneva Conference divided Vietnam temporarily along the 17th parallel into two states, North and South Vietnam. Elections would be held two years afterward to decide unification of the two Vietnams. On November 7, 1953, Cambodia became independent, two days later; Norodom Sihanouk (1922– ) returned to form a government. The conference recognized the Pathet Lao as a political party with control over the Phong Saly and Sam Neua Provinces. Although there is no disagreement over the Second Indochina War ending in 1975, there is controversy about the year of its beginning. The years 1954, 1957, 1959, and 1960 have been named as the starting point. Most authorities agree on 1959, when the central committee of the Lao Dong Party in January called for armed struggle in South Vietnam to achieve the goal of unification. Gradually the whole of Indochina would be involved in war because the Geneva Conference of 1954 did not resolve the Vietnamese problem, and all the signatories violated its provisions. The United States provided military and economic assistance to Ngo Dinh Diem (1901–63), the president of South Vietnam. Diem refused to hold the elections called for in the Geneva Conference to decide about unification. Compared to the weakness of Diem’s regime, Hanoi under Ho was politically stable and increased support to the communist factions in Laos, Cambodia, and South Vietnam. In September 1960 Le Duan (1908– 86), the secretary of the Lao Dong Party, called for the overthrow of Diem’s government to achieve the goal of unification. Le Duan had earlier led the independence struggle against France in the south. The Ho Chi Minh
Trail passing through Laos and Cambodia was the main supply route for North Vietnam to send convoys carrying supplies to the Vietcong in South Vietnam. The U.S. commitment to South Vietnam strengthened during President John F. Kennedy’s administration (1961–63), when the dispatch of American Green Beret “special advisers” to South Vietnam began. In August 1964 the USS Maddox was attacked by North Vietnamese patrol boats, creating the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Although the veracity of the incident was questioned afterward, the U.S. Congress gave full authority to President Lyndon B. Johnson to retaliate. The Vietnam War escalated, with the survival of South Vietnam a primary consideration for Johnson, who had reaffirmed the policy of Kennedy. The United States aimed at eliminating the Vietcong by bombing, chemical warfare, and counterinsurgency operations. Combat troops were sent in 1965, and their number reached 500,000 three years later. During the Tet (Vietnamese New Year) Offensive of January 1968, the communists attacked major cities of South Vietnam. Meanwhile, domestic dissent in the United States regarding the Vietnam War was gathering momentum. The coup by General Lon Nol (1913–85) in Cambodia on March 18, 1970, added a new dimension to the Second Indochina War. On April 21 the United Indochinese Front was established. The summit conference three days afterward in southern China was attended by Pham Van Dong representing North Vietnam, Norodom Sihanouk as head of the National United Front of Cambodia, Souphanouvong from the Pathet Lao, and Nguyen Huu Tho as a representative of the provisional government of South Vietnam. The delegates called for unity in fighting against the United States. The objectives of the 1971 U.S. attack on Laos were to cut the trail and prevent North Vietnam from attacking northern areas of South Vietnam. With 9,000 U.S. and 20,000 South Vietnamese troops, the campaign lasted for 45 days and resulted in a disastrous defeat of South Vietnam. The objective of cutting off the trail could not be achieved. The failure of South Vietnamese ground troops in spite of air support showed that it was not ready to take over a ground combat role from the United States. The lessening of tension in the international arena had its impact on the Paris Peace Talks, which had started on January 23, 1969. The Sino-U.S. rapprochement, growing domestic opposition to the war, increasing success of communists in battlefields, the mounting cost of the war, and the loss of life of U.S. soldiers compelled the United States to disengage from
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Vietnam. The Paris Peace Agreements on Vietnam were signed on January 27, 1973. It was only a matter of time before the communists would score the final victory. On April 30, 1975, communist forces entered the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon. The two Vietnams were reunited officially in January 1976. On December 2, 1975, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (LPDR) was formed. The government of Lon Nol in Cambodia was ousted by the Khmer Rouge on April 17, 1975. By 1975 the whole of Indochina was communist, and the Second Indochina War was over. Further reading: Addington, Larry H. America’s War in Vietnam: A Short Narrative History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000; Duiker, William J. Ho Chi Minh: A Life. Boston: Hyperion Books, 2000; Kaiser, David. American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War. Cambridge: MA: Harvard University Press, 2000; Quang Thi Lam. The Twenty-Five Year Century: A South Vietnamese General Remembers the Indochina War to the Fall of Saigon. Denton: University of North Texas, 2001; Turley, William S. The Second Indochina War: A Short Political and Military History, 1954–1975. New York: Penguin, 1986; Windrow, Martin. French Indochina War 1946–54. Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd, 1998. Patit Paban Mishra
Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) The left movement in Indonesia began within the Sarekat Islam (Islamic Association), established in 1911. Henk Sneevliet established the Indische Sociaal Democratische Vereenigin (ISDV, Indies Social Democratic Association) in 1914 and worked within the Sarekat Islam. After the Russian Revolution of 1917 the ISDV increased its membership, and in May 1920 it changed its name to Partai Kommunist Indonesia (PKI, Communist Party of Indonesia), which became the first communist party in Asia. It was expelled by the Sarekat Islam. The PKI organized strikes, and Dutch authorities, alarmed, expelled leaders like Sneevliet and Tan Malaka. The policy of repression by the government made the PKI popular, and it organized large-scale strikes in 1926. In November the Republic of Indonesia was proclaimed. After proclamation of the Republic of Indonesia on August 17, 1945, by Ahmed Sukarno (1901–70) the PKI believed it to be Japanese sponsored and fascist. The republic successfully crushed two communist rebellions in 1946 and 1948.
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There was a change in PKI’s direction after 1950 under the leadership of Dipa Nusantara Aidit. It had an agenda of nationalist commitment and supported Sukarno’s anticolonial policy. In the first general elections of 1955 the PKI was aligned with the Perserikatan Nasional Indonesia (PNI, Indonesian Nationalist Union), founded by Sukarno in June 1927. The PKI received 16.4 percent of the votes, and in the newly elected parliament it had 39 seats. With maneuvering and a dedicated party cadre, the PKI had become a political force to be reckoned with in the country. In July 1957 the PKI made advances in municipal elections. The PKI had become vocal about the Dutch control of West New Guinea (Irian Jaya/Papua). In the wake of a campaign to annex it, the members of PKI as well as PNI seized control of Dutch industries in December 1957. The PKI’s voice against the dominance of foreign capital in Indonesia gradually led to the nationalization of major industries. Religious parties like Islamist Masyumi were in favor of declaring the PKI illegal. The party had found Sukarno as an ally and supported his Guided Democracy. The PNI, PKI, and Nahdatul Ulema were among the major political parties that were allowed to function. After the abortive coup of February 1958, martial law was imposed by Sukarno, and the PKI supported it. By 1960 the PKI could influence Sukarno on internal and foreign policy of the country. The situation in Indonesia during the 1960s was ripe for a communist insurrection, and the PKI exploited the situation to its maximum potential. The crop failure in central Java in February 1964 resulted in a starving population of 1 million. Both Sukarno and the PKI launched the Crush Malaysia campaign. PKI cadres crossed over the border and took part in guerrilla warfare in Sarawak and north Borneo. The United States terminated military aid in September 1963. The PKI had begun a program of arming the people. It had become the third-largest communist party in the world, with a membership of 3.5 million. It had the direct support of 20 million people through its varied organizations. On the night of September 30, 1965, six top army generals were rounded up, taken to the Halim Air Force Base, and brutally killed. The identity of the perpetrators of the crime was not known, but blame was placed on the PKI. The Gerakan on September 30 resulted in violent retribution against the PKI. There was a slaughter of a half-million Communists, including the Chinese. The PKI was outlawed in March 1966. General Haji Mohamed Suharto (1921– ), who had taken leadership in crushing the coup, became the
acting president in March 1967. Sukarno remained under house arrest until his death on June 21, 1970. Suharto established the Kopkamtib (Operational Command for the Restoration of Security and Order) to scuttle the opposition, muzzle the press, and prevent the reemergence of the PKI. There was otokritik (selfcriticism) by exiled PKI members in Beijing. In 1999 President Abdurrahman Wahid asked the exiled PKI leaders to come back to open a dialogue, but the proposal did not find favor with fundamentalist Islamic groups. Further reading: Brown, Colin, and Robert Cribb. Modern Indonesia: A History Since 1945. New York: Addison Wesley, 1996; Hering, Bob. Soekarno: Founding Father of Indonesia 1901–1945. Leiden: KITLV Press, 2002; Mishra, Patit Paban. “Indonesia—Political Parties.” In Encyclopedia of Modern Asia. David Levinson and Karen Christensen, eds. Vol. 3. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2002; Ricklefs, Merle C. A History of Modern Indonesia ca. 1300 to the Present Day. London: MacMillan, 1981; Sardesai, D. R. Southeast Asia: Past and Present. New Delhi: Vikas, 1981. Patit Paban Mishra
Indo-Pakistani Wars (Kashmir) After the departure of the British in August 1947, India and Pakistan became successor states. The partition of the British Indian Empire into India and Pakistan left a legacy of mutual discord that is felt to the present day. India’s foreign policy after independence was centered around world issues; relations with India dominated Pakistan’s security concerns. Kashmir remained the major bone of contention between the two countries. The state of Jammu and Kashmir was Muslim-dominated, with Hindus and others constituting about 48 percent of the population. It had boundaries with both India and Pakistan. The ruler, Maharaja Hari Singh, vacillated over whether to join India or Pakistan. Pakistan sponsored an attack on the state on October 22, 1947, leading Hari Singh to sign the Instrument of Accession with the governorgeneral of independent India, Lord Mountbatten on October 26, 1947. The next day it was accepted by India. The sovereignty of Kashmir became a source of conflict, as Pakistan did not recognize the merger of its state with India. India agreed to Hari Singh’s request for military assistance after accepting the Instrument of Accession, and thus the first war between India and Pakistan began.
India airlifted reinforcements and deployed the 161st Infantry Brigade into Kashmir. Pakistan had occupied about one-third of the state and named it Azad Kashmir (Free Kashmir). In late December the war turned in favor of Pakistan when it gained control of the Punch, Mirpur, and Jhanger regions. By 1948 a stalemate had developed. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) of India took the matter to the United Nations (UN) despite some opposition in the cabinet, which saw Kashmir as an internal problem of India. The terms of the cease-fire outlined in the UN resolution of August 13, 1948, called for withdrawal of Pakistani troops and the holding of a plebiscite to determine the desire of the Kashmir people. On December 31, 1948, a cease-fire was declared, and the demarcation line after the end of hostilities became the line of control (LOC) between the two countries. The Kashmir valley, Jammu, and Ladakh came under Indian control, and the state became the only Muslim majority province of secular India. Swat, Gilgat, Hunza, Nagar, and Baltistan constituted Pakistanadministered Kashmir. continuing conflict Neither India nor Pakistan adhered to the August resolutions, and the conflict over Kashmir continued. Pakistan insisted on a plebiscite, while India demanded Pakistan’s withdrawal from territory it controlled (Azad Kashmir). In February the Constituent Assembly of the state of Jammu and Kashmir ratified accession to India, and, after two years, the state became one of the provinces of the Indian Union. After a boundary agreement between China and Pakistan was negotiated in March 1963, the situation became still more complicated because China gained a large portion of the Trans-Karakoram Tract, ceded by Pakistan. The defeat of India in the 1962 October War by China encouraged Pakistan to enter another round of war. It was widely believed that hawkish elements in Pakistan began the war so as to snatch an easy victory from a humiliated India after the Sino-Indian War. The second Indo-Pakistan conflict began after a series of border clashes starting in March 1965. The border skirmishes, which began in the Rann of Kutch region of Gujarat, were contained in June after British mediation. A tribunal gave Pakistan 350 square miles of territory in 1968. The president, Muhammad Ayub Khan (1907– 74), ordered Operation Gibraltar in August 1964 and sent infiltrators to Indian-held Kashmir. The skirmishes between the forces of India and Pakistan began on August 6 and escalated into a large
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attle nine days later. The Indian army captured the b strategic Haji Pir Pass inside Pakistan totalling 710 square miles of Pakistani territory, while Pakistan occupied 210 square miles of Indian territory. The UN Security Council called for a cease-fire on September 22 and the war ended the next day. A meeting between the prime minister of India, Lal Bahadur Shastri, and Ayub Khan was arranged in the city of Tashkent by Soviet premier Alexey Kosygin. Under the Tashkent Agreement of January 10, the armies of both India and Pakistan went back to the positions they had held before August 5. Both agreed to resolve their disputes by peaceful means and not to interfere in each others’ internal affairs. The Tashkent declaration proved to be a temporary respite in the deteriorating relationship between India and Pakistan. Ayub was blamed for Pakistan’s debacle and Pakistan’s foreign minister, Zulfikar Bhutto, resigned. Internally, East Pakistan was simmering with discontent; its leader, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, criticized the government for neglecting the security of East Pakistan at the time of the 1965 war. When East Pakistan declared its independence, the Pakistani army retaliated with brutality against the people of East Pakistan. Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi declared the support of her government of Bangladesh (the name for independent East Pakistan). Next, India signed a 20year Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation with the Soviet Union in August 1971 to checkmate either Chinese or U.S. interference in case of a war with Pakistan and gave support to Bangladesh’s revolt. On December 3 the Pakistani air force began preemptive air strikes against eight airfields in East Pakistan. India retaliated and began an air, land, and sea attack on Pakistani forces in the east, marching toward Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. More than 1 million people in Bangladesh perished before Pakistan’s army surrendered in Dhaka. Bhutto and Gandhi signed the Shimla Accords on July 2, 1972, by which both countries recognized the line of control (LOC) after the war of 1971. India and Pakistan resolved to refrain from the use of force against each other and to solve disputes bilaterally without third-party mediation. Starting in the mid-1980s, a sizable number of the people of Kashmir expressed a desire for independence and received support from Pakistan. Human rights abuses by the terrorists and the Indian army drew international attention. In 1998 both India and Pakistan conducted nuclear tests and their relations became more volatile. In spite of this, both prime ministers, Atal
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Bihari Vajpayee of India and Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan, signed the Lahore Declaration for solving the Kashmir dispute peacefully. In February 1999 a war that would last for 73 days began on May 8 on the Kargil ridges, situated about 120 miles from Srinagar, the capital of Indian Kashmir. Both armies had to fight in the inhospitable terrain of the Kargil mountains. On July 14 both India and Pakistan ended military operations without boundary changes. Kashmir has remained an unresolved problem between the two nations. It has assumed dangerous proportions with the potential for a nuclear conflict. However, summit talks have begun between leaders of both nations. Further reading: Akbar, M. K. Kargil: Cross Border Terrorism. New Delhi: Mittal, 1999; Amin, Tahir. Mass Resistance in Kashmir: Origins, Evolution and Options. Islamabad: Institute of Policy Studies, 1995; Gulati, M. N. Pakistan’s Downfall in Kashmir—The Three Indo-Pak Wars. New Delhi: Manas, 2004; Kamath, P. M., ed. India-Pakistan Relations, Courting Peace from the Corridors of War. New Delhi: Promilla, 2005; Raza, Rafi, ed. Pakistan in Perspective, 1947–1997. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1997; Schofield, Victoria. Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War. London: I.B. Tauris, 2002. Patit Paban Mishra
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) For more than seven decades (1929–2000) Mexico was governed by a single ruling party that dominated Mexican politics in a so-called one-party democracy. Dubbed the “perfect dictatorship” in 1990 by the conservative Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, the ruling party went through several name changes and transformed in important ways as the century progressed, but it also retained a high degree of institutional continuity. Following the Mexican Revolution (1910–20), the constitution of 1917, and the turmoil of the Cristero Rebellion (1926–29), the party was founded in 1929 by Supreme Chief (Jefe Máximo) and President Plutarco Elías Calles (1929–34). It was called the Revolutionary National Party (Partido Nacional Revolucionario, or PNR). In 1938, soon after nationalizing the properties of foreign oil companies, President Lázaro Cárdenas
(1934–40) changed its name to the Mexican Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Mexicana, or PRM). Its final name change came under President Miguel Alemán Valdés (1946–52), when in 1946 it became the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institutional, or PRI), as it has remained into the 21st century. The PRI and its forebears (hereafter referred to as the PRI) won every national election from 1934 to 2000, when it was defeated at the polls by Vicente Fox, candidate of the opposition party Partido de Acción Nacional (National Action Party, or PAN). While the PRI did not outlaw opposition parties—in fact, encouraging their existence to lend greater legitimacy to its rule—its grip on the reins of state power remained unassailable by virtue of its domination of the machinery of state, the major media, and the electoral process, and by its capacity to repress or coopt opposition and to garner popular support by its selective dispensation of government patronage. Its strategies of rule and modes of domination were similar to the political machines that dominated major U.S. urban centers, such as Mayor Richard J. Daley’s political machine in Chicago (1955–76). Despite its origins in the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution and its ostensibly “revolutionary” orientation, the PRI grew increasingly conservative, authoritarian, and corrupt after the major reforms of the Cárdenas years. Cárdenas in effect forged an authoritarian corporatist state, in which all major social sectors were represented in the state and party’s bureaucratic and administrative structures: the military, labor unions, the agrarian sector, and the popular sector. Unlike the situation in many Latin American countries, the Mexican army and police remained firmly subordinated to civilian authority. Organized labor was represented by the Mexican Workers’ Federation (Confederación de Trabajadores de México, or CTM), an increasingly bureaucratized union founded under Cárdenas and firmly integrated into state structures. Independent or insurgent labor unions were either repressed or coopted. The agrarian sector was represented by the National Peasant Confederation (Confederación Nacional Campesino, or CNC) and other state-controlled organizations. In the six decades from 1940 to 2000, the PRI was characterized by its conservatism at home and, from the 1950s, its rhetorical support for leftist and revolutionary movements abroad, such as the Cuban revolution. Under President Manuel Ávila Camacho (1940–46), the PRI supported the Allies in World War
II and in 1942 agreed to the Bracero Program with the United States, permitting a specified number of temporary Mexican laborers into that country annually to work in mining, commercial agriculture, and related industries. Conceived as a wartime measure, under pressure from the U.S. government and commercial interests, the program was extended until 1965. Dispensing with much of the socialist rhetoric and orientation of the Cárdenas years, the Camacho administration slowed the pace of agrarian reform; installed the moderate Fidel Velásquez as head of the CTM (which he dominated until his death in 1997); established a state-run national bank (Nacional Financiera); loosened restrictions on foreign ownership of Mexican resources; expanded public works programs; and embarked on an export-led model of national development. These trends continued under Camacho’s successors Miguel Alemán Valdés (1946–52), Adolfo Ruiz Cortines (1952–58), Adolfo López Mateos (1958–64), and Gustavo Díaz Ordaz (1964 –70). These were the years of the so-called Mexican Miracle, when relative social peace prevailed, state-led industrialization made major strides, and economic growth rates were the highest in the nation’s history. The government’s principal source of foreign exchange derived from state control of the Mexican oil industry through PEMEX (Petróleos Mexicanos), established in 1938. In the 1960s many Mexicans grew increasingly disenchanted with the ruling party’s authoritarianism and corruption. A major crack in the PRI’s ideological edifice came in the October 1968 Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico City, on the eve of the country’s hosting of the Olympics, when the police and state security forces violently repressed popular demonstrations calling for greater democracy. The PRI’s corruption, graft, nepotism, and violent repression of opposition mounted in the 1970s under presidents Luis Echeverría Alvarez (1970–76) and José López Portillo (1976–82). Oil revenues were at an alltime high, though much of the income was squandered in bribes, kickbacks, inflated salaries, and wasteful projects. Numerous protest movements by workers, students, farmers, and others were violently suppressed, including a guerrilla movement in the state of Guerrero led by former schoolteacher Lucio Cabañas. Government debt rose dramatically, with world financial markets flush with petrodollars and transnational financial institutions like the World Bank eager to extend low-interest loans to “developing” economies like Mexico’s. In 1982, under President Miguel de
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la Madrid (1982–88), a combination of a global recession, low world oil prices, record-high debt ($80 billion in 1982), galloping inflation, and massive government expenditures led to the effective bankruptcy of the Mexican state. Devaluation of the peso and a restructuring of the international debt followed, though in December 1988, when de la Madrid left office, foreign debt had risen to a record $105 billion, second only to Brazil’s. As a consequence of these and related crises, the administrations of presidents Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988–94) and Ernesto Zedillo (1994–2000) embarked on a major effort to rein in inflation and slash the size of the federal government through privatization of state-owned industries and pursuit of fiscal austerity measures recommended by the International Monetary Fund. The combination of prolonged economic crises and erosion of the PRI’s ideological legitimacy led to the party’s defeat in the 2000 elections, though it continued to play a major role in the National Assembly and in state and local governments throughout Fox’s tenure, as it promised to play in the administration of PAN-affiliated President Felipe Calderón, elected in 2006. Further reading: Castañeda, Jorge G. The Mexican Shock: Its Meaning for the United States. New York: New Press, 1995; Meyer, Michael C., William L. Sherman, and Susan M. Deeds. The Course of Mexican History. 8th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007; Middlebrook, Kevin J. The Paradox of Revolution: Labor, the State, and Authoritarianism in Mexico. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. Michael J. Schroeder
International Monetary Fund (IMF) Since its foundation at the end of World War II, the International Monetary Fund (IMF, or Fund) has been one of the world’s most powerful and controversial multilateral economic institutions. Debates on the role of the IMF in the global economy have intensified in recent decades, especially from the 1990s. Like its “sister institution,” the World Bank, the IMF was conceived at the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944 and formally established the following year, its official mandate “to promote international monetary cooperation . . . to facilitate the expansion and balanced growth of international
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trade . . . to promote exchange stability . . . to assist in . . . the elimination of foreign exchange restrictions which hamper the growth of world trade . . . to give confidence to members by making the general resources of the Fund temporarily available to them . . . ” (Article I, Purposes, Articles of Agreement of the IMF). Headquartered in Washington, D.C., since its foundation, in 2007 it had 184 member countries, with a staff of 2,716 in 165 countries. In pursuit of its mandate, the IMF purports to engage in three principal activities: (1) surveillance through the “monitoring of economic and financial developments”; (2) providing loans; and (3) providing technical assistance. It is governed by its Board of Governors, one from each member country. The Executive Board, comprised of 24 directors, is responsible for its daily operation. Eight of these 24 Executive Board members are appointed by the IMF’s largest “quota holders” (the United States, Japan, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom). A member’s quota “is broadly determined by its economic position relative to other members.” In 2007 the United States had the largest quota, based on “special drawing rights” (SDRs), with SDR 37.1 billion (equivalent to $55.1 billion). In essence, the IMF’s largest contributors wield the most power within the institution. Critics charge that the IMF and the “neoliberal” economic paradigm that it promotes locks underdeveloped countries into positions of structural subordination within the global capitalist system. Especially controversial are IMF policy prescriptions for “austerity measures” and “structural adjustment” that include privatization of state-run entities, reduced public expenditures, and radically curtailed intervention of national governments in their national economies. Opposition to IMF policies and their underlying rationales has intensified in recent decades, as evidenced in part by the rise of left-leaning neo-populist regimes in Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, and elsewhere in Latin America from the 1990s. Denouncing IMF policies as unjust, immoral, corporate welfare, and a major contributor to poverty, unemployment, and human misery worldwide, critics characterize the IMF and associated multilateral institutions and treaties (the World Bank, the G-7, the World Trade Organization [WTO], NAFTA, and many others) as instruments of the wealthy and powerful and major obstacles to social justice, economic well-being, and political rights among the world’s poor. As economic globalization accelerates in the 21st century, debates on the role of the IMF are likely to intensify.
Further reading: International Monetary Fund Web site. www.imf.org (accessed February 12, 2007); O’Brien, Robert, et al., Contesting Global Governance: Multilateral Economic Institutions and Global Social Movements. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Michael J. Schroeder
interstate highway system, U.S. In 1919 shortly after the conclusion of World War I, the United States Army organized a convoy that departed Washington, D.C., bound for San Francisco, California. The objectives of the cross-country trek were to test military vehicles and ascertain the feasibility of mass transport on a nationwide scale. The trip took 62 days. Twenty-five years later General Eisenhower commanded the invasion of Europe during World War II and noted the ease and freedom of movement for the troops. Early attempts to construct a national highway system in the United States were woefully underfunded; President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had proposed such a project as a means of putting the unemployed to work during the Great Depression and World War II. Elected president in 1952, Eisenhower advanced an agenda that led to the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1954, under which state and federal governments would match road and bridge construction costs. Two years later, Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, which provided federal funding of $25 billion for a highway system. The roads were designed to accommodate traffic volumes expected 20 years later. Lanes were required to be 12 feet wide with a paved 10-foot shoulder; a minimum of two lanes in each direction had to carry cars at speeds of 50 to 70 miles per hour. More than 41,000 miles of highway would be built. North-south roadways were designated with numbers ending in odd integers; east-west interstates were given even numbers. Alaska is the only state without an interstate highway. Eisenhower may have considered a highway system necessary for the efficient movement of military equipment and personnel or the effective evacuation of cities in event of a nuclear attack, but the effects on the economy were much wider-reaching. Suburbs grew, construction jobs were created, and commercial freight was transported; more automobiles were built, and roadside businesses developed. There were drawbacks as well, some becoming clear only later. Many older cities embraced interstate projects only to find that downtown business
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The creation of the U.S. interstate highway system had far- reaching effects on the economy and the way of American life.
districts could now be bypassed entirely. Interstate routes disrupted urban neighborhoods and slashed across farmers’ fields. The ease of interstate travel discouraged mass transit and helped speed the demise of long-haul passenger rail service. Interstate maintenance and capacity issues continued to create friction between the federal and state governments. Further reading: Lewis, Tom. Divided Highways: The Interstate Highway System and the Transformation of American Life. New York: Viking Press, 1997; Rose, Mark H. Interstate Express Highway Politics, 1941–1981. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990. John M. Mayernik
Intifada (first) The first intifada (the Intifada, from the Arabic for “shaking off ”) was a popular uprising among Palestinians against Israel’s military occupation, confiscation of their land, and suppression of their collective identity. The uprising started on December 8, 1987, in the Palestinian refugee camp Jabalya in the Gaza Strip, and quickly spread to the rest of Gaza and the West Bank,
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including East Jerusalem, all of which had been under Israeli occupation since the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. The Intifada was a spontaneous popular phenomenon caused by a number of domestic and international factors. The most important of these factors was a sense of hopelessness that had pervaded the occupied territories and the belief among Palestinians that neither the military efforts of the Arab states nor diplomatic efforts by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Arab states would end the occupation. According to some analysts, the final catalyzing factor emerged in November 1987 when the Arab leaders at the Summit Conference in Amman, Jordan—just 40 miles away from the occupied territories—placed the Iran-Iraq War at the top of the Arab political agenda and relegated the Palestinian question to the end of the list. In addition, the Palestinian economy had declined since the 1967 war, and the territories had become a reservoir for cheap labor for Israel and its second-biggest export market after the United States. The average income of the Palestinian worker had declined, and a growing number of Jewish settlers had moved into the territories. The Intifada used mainly low-key violence and avoided the use of weapons. It was largely limited to political demonstrations, strikes, refusal to pay taxes, and some stone throwing. Nevertheless, the Israeli authorities moved to suppress the uprising; Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin ordered the troops “to break the bones of the Palestinian demonstrators.” Following high casualties among Palestinians, the United Nations Security Council announced that it deplored the Israeli repression, but the confrontation continued and in the first 13 months of the Intifada more than 300 Palestinians and 12 Israelis lost their lives. The economic price of the Intifada was also high. Between 1987 and 1990 the GNP in Gaza declined at least 30 percent; the situation in the West Bank was not much better. By the middle of 1990 the Intifada had lost much of its earlier impetus, and popular frustrations resulted in the killing of real or suspected collaborators. In spite of these hardships and the lack of success, the Intifada was seen by the Palestinians as a major event in their recent history. It was a popular action that encompassed all social strata and groups. The popular committees in towns and villages mobilized the population and looked after the families of the dead and wounded. However, the Intifada failed to achieve the long-term goal of self-determination and the end of the Israeli occupation. In November 1988 the Palestinian National Council at Algiers declared an independent Palestinian state, but
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Israel deemed the declaration null and void. Although the PLO did not initiate the Intifada, it tried to play a leading role in the struggle, in the course of which the PLO and Hamas became political rivals. This internal division weakened the popular movement. The Intifada did succeed in bringing international attention back to the Palestinian cause and was a factor behind the U.S. sponsorship of the Madrid Conference in November 1991. See also Arab-Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. Further reading: Peretz, Don. Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990; Sandler, Shmuel. The Arab-Israeli Conflict Transformed: Fifty Years of Interstate and Ethnic Crises. Albany: SUNY Press, 2002; Shalev, Aryeh. The Intifada: Causes and Effects. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, 1991. Andrej Kreutz
Intifada, al-Aqsa The al-Aqsa Intifada (uprising) of Palestinians broke out in September 2000 following a provocative visit by Ariel Sharon and 400 Israeli soldiers to the Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem. The Haram al-Sharif complex includes the al-Aqsa Mosque, which is viewed by Muslims as the third-most-sacred site in Islam. Many Jews believe the site is also the location of the ancient temple of Solomon and refer to it as the Temple Mount. Some also hope to rebuild the temple on the site in the future. Owing to these conflicting religious and historic claims, the site has been a flash point for confrontations between Palestinians and Israelis. The al-Aqsa Intifada was also evidence of continued Palestinian opposition to the Israeli occupation and the failure to achieve meaningful national independence. The uprising fed Israeli fears and the determination by those on the Israeli right to retain control of the territories. Since the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the Israeli military government had controlled more than 1.9 million Palestinians through military orders; these included arrests, detention without trial, restrictions on movement, collective punishment, and land appropriation as well as appropriation of water resources. Under dual governance, Israeli settlers in the territories—some 200,000 by 2006—came under Israeli law, but Palestinians remained under military rule. Under the Oslo Accords Israel had agreed to trade land for
peace and had gradually withdrawn from some territory in the West Bank. The Palestinians had hoped that Oslo would be a step toward the creation of an independent Palestinian state. Disillusioned and angry over the continued Israeli occupation and the perceived failures and corruption of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), led by Yasir Arafat and Fatah, many young Palestinians turned to the more radical Hamas and Islamic Jihad. They adopted a new tactic of using suicide bombers to attack not only Israeli soldiers and settlers in the occupied territories but also Israeli civilians across the socalled green line inside the pre-1967 Israeli borders. These attacks undermined support for the peace process in Israel and strengthened the position of Israeli hard-liners who were opposed to returning any territory. Further Israeli settlements also continued to be built even after Oslo in 1993. Ariel Sharon, known for his hawkish stance and support for the settlers, was elected Israeli prime minister in 2001. In 2002 Israeli forces reoccupied much of the West Bank territory that had been turned over to the Palestine Authority. In Jenin the Israelis met with armed Palestinian opposition. Israeli forces retaliated by reducing much of the town to rubble, and many were killed or made homeless. Israeli forces also laid seige to Bethlehem, where several wanted Palestinians had taken refuge in the Church of the Nativity. Arafat’s compound in Ramallah was also surrounded, and he spent most of the last two years of his life under virtual house arrest. Israel also assassinated Sheik Ahmed Yassin and Abdul Aziz al-Rantissi, two key Hamas leaders. Yet the suicide attacks inside Israel continued, resulting in a number of civilian deaths. By 2004 over 4,000 Palestinians and 900 Israelis had died, more than had died in the six years of the first Intifada. Israel also began to build a wall to separate the territories. At 360 kilometers long, with guard towers at about every 300 meters, trenches, and barbed wire, the wall was twice as long as and three times higher than the Berlin Wall. Built entirely on Palestinian land occupied by Israel since the 1967 war, the wall separated Palestinians from one another, limited access to Jerusalem, and isolated some communities entirely. However, the wall did not prevent further suicide attacks. Following Arafat’s death in 2004, Mahmoud Abbas, known as Abu Mazen, became the new Palestinian president. But in spite of concerted efforts he failed to revive the peace process or to stop the suicide bombers. Hamas won the free and open Palestinian elections in 2006, and Ismail Haniyeh, a popular and charismatic Hamas leader from the Gaza Strip, became the prime minister. Israel and its ally the United
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States refused to deal with Hamas, which the United States considered a terrorist organization. Much-needed foreign aid was halted or constricted, and the economic situation in the territories became increasingly dire. Prime Minister Sharon adopted a policy of sequential unilateral decisions whereby he made policy regarding the territories without consultation with the Palestinians. In 2005 he withdrew Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip and dismantled several Israeli settlements, but Israel retained control over land, air, and sea entries into Gaza and periodically attacked or invaded, often in retaliation for attacks by Palestinians. After Sharon was incapacitated following a series of strokes, Ehud Olmert—a former mayor of Jerusalem— became the Israeli prime minister in 2006. He pledged to continue Sharon’s policies and supported a massive Israeli invasion into Lebanon in the summer of 2006 in a failed attempt to eradicate Hizbollah attacks. Hence the cycle of violence and retaliation continued to escalate and the lives of both Israelis and Palestinians became less safe. See also Arab-Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. Further reading: Bucaille, Laetitia. Growing Up Palestinian: Israeli Occupation and the Intifada Generation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004; Usher, Graham. Palestine In Crisis: The Struggle for Peace and Political Independence after Oslo. London: Pluto Press, 1994. Janice J. Terry
Iran, contemporary The Islamic Republic of Iran was established in April 1979 after the revolution overthrew the monarchy of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Years of turbulence preceded the revolution, led by exiled Shi’i cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Khomeini was an Islamic scholar from the conservative city of Qom; under the shah’s regime he had been exiled to Iraq. After being expelled from Iraq, at the shah’s prodding, Khomeini moved to France, where he coordinated a revolution using the press, radio, and audio cassettes to incite Iranians to rise up against the shah. After the shah fled the country, Khomeini returned to Iran in 1979. The Ayatollah exhorted Iranian citizens (male and female) over 16 years of age to vote for the creation of an Islamic Republic. In free and open elections 98 percent voted in favor of the republic. The overthrow of the monarchy—although celebrated by most Iranians tired
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of rampant corruption, overspending, and the police state created by the shah—nevertheless worried many secularists who were alarmed by the new government, which was controlled by the mullahs, or Shi’i clergy. Under the new 1979 constitution a supreme leader ruled over a theocracy; beneath the supreme leader a 12-member cabinet, or Council of Guardians, oversaw the constitution and had veto power over legislation passed by the Majlis, or parliament. Khomeini served as the first supreme leader until his death in 1989. Khomeini sought to establish a government that adhered to a strict Shi’i code of law and conduct. Iranian women, who had the right to vote and to work outside the home, nevertheless were restricted regarding dress and modes of behavior. The secularists within the government who had struggled against the shah were marginalized by the new Islamist forces, and many fled the country for Europe and the United States. Following the shah’s overthrow, Iranian relations with the United States, a strong ally of the Pahlavi dynasty, deteriorated. When the shah entered the United States for cancer treatment in 1979, riots broke out in Tehran and angry students stormed the U.S. embassy and took many hostages. Khomeini encouraged the students and labeled the United States the “Great Satan.” Many Iranians blamed the United States for its support of the shah and his repressive regime. The students demanded that the shah be handed over to the new Islamic regime for trial in exchange for the release of the embassy hostages. The United States refused to return the shah and severed diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic. The resulting crisis dragged on for more than a year before the hostages were released, and diplomatic relations between the United States and Iran had yet to be resumed. Neighboring Arab governments were also alarmed at Khomeini’s attempts to export Islamic revolution to other Muslim nations. Neighboring Iraq, with its large Shi’i population, was particularly concerned. The Iraqi government led by Saddam Hussein, with at least the tacit support of other Arab states and the United States, decided to preempt the Islamic revolution by attacking Iran in 1980. Although the Iranians were taken by surprise, Hussein severely underestimated the national determination of Iran, and a long, eight-year war of attrition began. The Iran-Iraq War lasted from 1980 to 1988 and caused massive casualties and destruction on both sides. Western and Arab governments provided arms and assistance to Iraq, while several communistbloc countries, Libya, and Syria provided support to Iran. By 1988 both nations were exhausted and agreed to a United Nations–brokered truce.
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Khomeini died the next year, and Ali al-Khameini became the new supreme leader. Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, a mullah who advocated resumption of relations with the West, was elected president and purged many hardline members from his cabinet. However, reformist governments elected by wide margins in the 1990s were thwarted in implementing reforms and liberalization by the hard-line Council of Guardians, who retained final say on legislation. Although the youthful Iranian population, many born after the revolution, wanted liberalization of the media, social life, and dress, the conservative mullahs clung to power. In the 1990s Iran also started to build up its nuclear capabilities. Prior to the 1979 revolution Iran had signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which gave Iran the right to use and research nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. However, after the 2005 election of Mahmud Ahmadinejad, a conservative and controversial populist, as president, Iran’s nuclear research appeared to escalate. The United States threatened sanctions and military action were Iran to continue its nuclear ambitions, but Ahmadinejad appealed to Iranian nationalism and argued that Iran had the right to develop nuclear weapons as other nations such as Israel, Pakistan, and India had done. After the occupation of Iraq in the Second Gulf War, Iran emerged as a major regional power. It continued to lend financial and military support to Shi’i communities in Iraq and to Hizbollah in Lebanon. Its oil reserves also gave Iran considerable leverage economically, as it threatened to switch from selling oil in dollar prices and move to gold or the euro; this could devastate the dollar and weaken the U.S. economy. Mired in protracted conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States protested Iranian policies but had few options to force it to drop its support for Islamist movements or its nuclear program. See also Iran hostage crisis; Iranian revolution. Further reading: Esposito, John, ed. The Iranian Revolution: Its Global Impact. Miami: Florida International University Press, 1990; Keddie, Nikki. Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003. Katie Belliel
Iran-contra affair The Iran-contra affair involved an attempt by the National Security Council (NSC) of the Ronald Reagan administration to circumvent congressional limita-
tions on aid to the contras (Nicaraguan guerrillas) and to secure the release of U.S. hostages held in the Middle East through the sale of arms to Iran. The revelation of this attempt undercut the popularity of the president and led to the indictment of several aides. The affair arose from parallel events in Central America and the Middle East. In Central America, the Reagan administration was supporting the contras, an amalgam of individuals and groups who opposed the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. Despite a reputation for ineffectiveness and drug dealing, the contras were considered by the Reagan administration to be the best alternative to the Marxist Sandinistas. Congress passed the Boland Amendment in 1982, which prohibited funding for the “overthrow of the government of Nicaragua.” The amendment allowed humanitarian aid but specifically prohibited covert aid by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). At the same time in the Middle East, terrorist organizations such as Islamic Jihad were increasing their harassment of U.S. citizens in response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the U.S. organization of a United Nations peacekeeping force in Beirut. Over a dozen U.S. citizens were kidnapped and taken hostage between 1982 and 1984. The Reagan administration responded to this provocation by vowing never to negotiate with terrorists, while blaming the Iranians for supporting these organizations. Additionally the Iranians were locked in a war with the Saddam Hussein–led country of Iraq. Running from 1980 to 88, the Iran-Iraq War would be bloody but ultimately inconclusive. In the course of the fighting the Iranians began to run into a significant problem. Most of their military hardware had been purchased from the United States before the 1979 overthrow of the shah. As the war dragged on, Iran began to run short of ammunition and spare parts, which they could not acquire from the United States because of a congressional ban on arms sales to the Iranians stemming from the hostage crisis of 1979–81. The NSC, led by National Security Advisor John Poindexter and CIA director William Casey, proposed the following arrangement to the president and his advisers. Through private arms dealers and Israel, the United States would sell arms to the Iranians above cost. In return, the United States expected Iran to pressure the terrorists to free the U.S. hostages. The profits from the arms sales would be secretly diverted to the contras to keep their activities afloat. Reagan approved the idea despite opposition from Secretary of State George Shultz and some dissent from Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger.
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The first arms shipments took place in 1985, and more were sent in 1986. Despite pressure and apparent promises, only one hostage and the body of a second were released. The money and additional supplies were funneled to the contras until October 1986, when a CIAchartered plane crashed in Nicaragua. Its pilot confessed to running supplies to the contras. On November 3 a Lebanese journal, Al-Shira, revealed the existence of the arms sales to Iran. The Reagan administration acknowledged the existence of the arms sales and contra supplies in a speech by the president on November 13. Witnesses such as NSC staff member Colonel Oliver North testified before both Congress and the Tower Commission, admitting to the arms sales and funding while portraying the president as a “handsoff” administrator. Reagan’s own appearance before the commission revealed the president’s shaky grasp of details and apparently poor memory of events. In the Tower Commission’s final report, the president’s lack of control over his staff was strongly criticized, but most of the blame for the scandal was placed on the National Security Council and its staff. See also contra war; Iran hostage crisis; Sandinista National Liberation Front. Further reading: Busby, Robert. Reagan and the Iran-Contra Affair: The Politics of Recovery. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999; Draper, Theodore. A Very Thin Line. New York: Hill and Wang, 1991; Kornbluh, Peter. The Iran-Contra Scandal: The Declassified History. New York: New Press, 1993. Richard M. Filipink, Jr.
Iran hostage crisis The Iran hostage crisis was a diplomatic conflict between the United States and Iran that formally began on November 4, 1979, when Islamic militants overran the U.S. embassy in Tehran and seized its staff as hostages. This situation lasted through the end of President Jimmy Carter’s term and hurt him politically in the presidential election against Ronald Reagan. Relations between the United States and Iran began to break down during the Iranian revolution in early 1979. Prior to this Iran’s ruler, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, had been an ally of the United States. The shah had purchased billions of dollars’ worth of U.S. arms and had committed Iran to a program of Westernstyle modernization—a program that by the 1970s had
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c reated a political and cultural backlash by Islamic fundamentalists (chief among them the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini). In an attempt to blunt this backlash, the shah resorted to increasingly heavy-handed internal measures, but only succeeded in alienating the Iranian populace. In January 1979 the shah was overthrown and forced into exile, and an Islamic-style theocracy, led by the Ayatollah Khomeini, assumed power. The U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran’s capital, warned President Carter soon afterward that allowing the shah into the United States would precipitate a crisis with the new Iranian government, but the shah, ill with cancer, was admitted to a New York hospital on October 23. By this time the exiled shah had been legally deposed and formally sentenced to death in Iran. Less than two weeks later the long-brewing crisis of anti-U.S. feelings broke out when a mob of Iranian militants seized the U.S. embassy, detained 66 members of the staff as hostages, and demanded the extradition of the shah to Iran in return for the release of the hostages. President Carter rejected this, but in December 1979 the shah left the United States, first for Panama and then to Egypt, where he died on July 27, 1980. Since the hostage taking violated diplomatic convention and international law, Carter was able to rally world opinion against Iran and impose an economic embargo. The White House attempted several failed diplomatic initiatives. The Ayatollah Khomeini, who had privately sanctioned the actions of the hostage takers, refused to see U.S emissaries and rebuffed U.S. diplomatic efforts. In the only successful diplomatic measure, Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) representatives gained the release of 13 female and African-American hostages. On April 7, 1980, the United States officially broke diplomatic ties with Iran. Despite continued pressure on Iran, the hostages remained in captivity five months after the crisis began, and domestic pressure mounted on the Carter administration to find a solution. After much deliberation, President Carter decided that direct intervention was needed. Carter then authorized Operation Desert Claw, an ill-fated military rescue plan. The April 24, 1980, rescue mission suffered from having to traverse great distances by air, unexpected sandstorms, and untimely mechanical failures. The final mishap came during a desert refueling stop, when a helicopter collided with a tanker plane loaded with high-octane aviation fuel, killing eight U.S. servicemen. The failure of the rescue mission did not end negotiations, but the Carter administration appeared to be paralyzed by the crisis. Finally, on January 19, 1981,
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Vice President George Bush welcomes Colonel Thomas E. Schaefer, one of the Americans held hostage by Iran.
U.S. secretary of state Cyrus Vance quietly signed the Algiers Accord, which established the pre–November 4, 1979, situation. Its main clause was the restitution of frozen Iranian financial assets in the United States. In return, on January 20 Iran released the U.S. hostages after 444 days of captivity, just minutes after Ronald Reagan’s inauguration. Further reading: Bowden, Mark. Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America’s War with Militant Islam. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006; Carter, Jimmy. Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President. New York: Bantam, 1982; Farber, David. Taken Hostage: The Iran Hostage Crisis and America’s First Encounter with Radical Islam. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005; Sick, Gary. All Fall Down: America’s Tragic Encounter with Iran. New York: Random House, 1985. Keith Bukovich
Iranian revolution The Iranian revolution of 1979 overthrew the Pahlavi dynasty and established an Islamic republic. In 1953 when it appeared that the monarchy was about to be
overthrown, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) helped to orchestrate a countercoup that kept Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in power. Iran, under the shah, was closely allied with the United States and in the cold war Iran was a staunchly pro-Western buffer on the southern flank of the Soviet Union. Iran was used as a base for United States military and intelligence gathering aimed at the Soviet Union. The United States also supplied considerable assistance to the shah. In 1961 the shah announced an ambitious plan of development known as the White Revolution. The sixpoint plan included improvements in women’s rights, healthcare, and education, as well as privatization of state-owned factories and land reform. The proposed nationalization of land owned by the clergy and landed elites led to major demonstrations against the government. The shah repressed all political opposition, and his secret police, SAVAK, imprisoned and often tortured opponents of the regime, especially members of the Iranian communist Tudeh Party. Conservative businessmen in the Tehran bazaar, traditionally a major force in Iranian politics, and the clergy were also offended by the lifestyles of the elite, who emulated Western dress, consumed alcohol (forbidden to Muslims), and practiced open relations between the sexes. Even the Iranian middle class was dismayed by the extravagant expenses of the 1967 formal coronation of the shah and his wife and the 1971 celebration of the 2,500th anniversary of the Peacock Throne at Persepolis. In the 1970s Iran became a regional power when the shah used increased revenues from petroleum to buy sophisticated armaments, mostly from the United States. A number of Iranian intellectuals laid the groundwork for the revolution in books and treatises critical of the Pahlavi regime. Samad Behrangi (1939–68) wrote popular folktales that were in fact veiled critiques of the shah’s regime. He also wrote against what he called “west struckedness,” or intoxication with all things Western. Jalal Al-e Ahmad (1923–69), a writer from a clerical family, described those Iranians who copied the West as diseased. Ali Shari’ati (1933–77) was the most influential Iranian social critic. A sociologist, Shari’ati was educated at the Sorbonne. He was familiar with Marxist thought but fused it with Islam, arguing that independent reasoning should be applied to interpreting the Qu’ran to create a new society. A prolific writer, Shari’ati was a major influence on a new generation of Iranian students. In an attempt to halt his writing and political activity, the government arrested Shari’ati, who was tortured, released,
and then placed under house arrest. His books were banned, and he died in exile in London. The clergy also opposed the shah’s efforts to undermine their authority and stop government subsidies for religious schools. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a leading cleric in Qom, a conservative center for the training of Shi’i mullahs, was particularly outspoken in his hostility to the shah. An expert on Islamic law, Khomeini spoke against the acquisition of U.S. military equipment and favored treatment in Iran, and he was arrested several times in the 1960s. In 1964 he was sent into exile to Turkey, and he then took up residence in the Shi’i holy city of Najaf in Iraq, where his activities were closely monitored by the Iraqi government. In 1978 the shah convinced Saddam Hussein to oust Khomeini, who then moved to France, where he had access to the media, enjoyed freedom of movement, and attracted a loyal following among dissident Iranians. The shah’s regime was accused of increased corruption and nepotism while the gap between the wealthy who lived lavish lifestyles and the poor in the countryside and urban slums widened. The revolt against the regime began in January 1978, with riots in Qom protesting an anti-Khomeini article published in a newspaper. Police forces moved in to crush the riot and killed 100 protesters. To commemorate their deaths as martyrs, protests took place in Tabriz and Yazd in March; these demonstrations led to more deaths when the police moved in to stop them. This initiated a 40-day cycle of riots and repression, with inevitable deaths. In May riots broke out in 34 towns. The demonstrators were encouraged by speeches by Khomeini on cassette tapes that were smuggled into the country. Khomeini emerged as the symbol of opposition to the shah’s regime. In August a fire set by the shah’s appointees at a cinema in Abadan killed an estimated 400 students who had gathered to protest the regime. This was followed by “Black Friday” in September, when demonstrators were massacred in Tehran. By the fall a new pattern of strikes by students, teachers, and their supporters emerged. In December, government workers and employees in the petroleum industry as well as the army joined the protests. Women were also active participants in these demonstrations. Most of those who lost their lives were young Iranians, often from the Left. The clergy remained largely in the background but would emerge as the major political force after the fall of the monarchy. The United States failed to find a substitute for the shah, who seemed convinced that Washington would step in to save his regime.
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In the face of mounting violence and lack of support even within the military, the shah, ill with cancer, fled the country in January 1979. He left a caretaker government under Shapour Baktiar, who had no base of support. Khomeini returned amid massive demonstrations of support in February. Following Khomeini’s triumphal return, Baktiar fled Iran and was replaced by Mehdi Bazargan. The Iranian Islamic Republic was established on April 1, 1979. The shah was allowed into the United States for medical treatment in the fall of 1979; this inflamed Iranians, who had demanded his return for trial. The shah, who had difficulty finding a country to grant him asylum, died in Egypt in 1980. In Tehran students, many of them members of newly formed, self-appointed committees (kometehs), stormed and took the U.S. embassy and held U.S. hostages for over a year. Khomeini used the resulting crisis and chaos to help cement the clergy’s control over the new government. Right-wing Hojatieh groups supporting militant Islam also emerged; they were supported by some ayatollahs and bazaaris. The 1979 constitution provided for a Majlis (parliament), a president elected by direct representation, and a velayat e faqif, a spiritual leader, to act as the final authority in the nation. Khomeini was named the first faqif. The Council of Guardians acted as a supreme court to review all legislation of the Majlis. The council frequently rejected parliamentary legislation such as trade nationalization and land reform as un-Islamic. Abolhassan Bani-Sadr was elected the first president by a wide margin in 1980, but he was removed from office by Khomeini in the summer of 1981. Sadr then went into exile to France. Khomeini repressed political opponents and purged members of the old regime as well as the leftist opposition, such as the Fedayin alKhalq. The Iranian Revolution had a huge impact on the Islamic world, and many young Muslims, discouraged by the corruption and ineffectiveness of the governments in their own countries, looked to Iran as a possible model for future changes. Khomeini’s open support for regime change in neighboring Arab nations aroused the fears of Saudi Arabia and other states and led to the Iran-Iraq War. However, in spite of internal contradictions, domestic opposition, and condemnation by many international forces, the Islamic regime proved to be remarkably flexible and long lasting. See also Iran hostage crisis. Further reading: Algar, Hamid. The Roots of the Islam Revolution. London: Open Press, 1983; Arjomand, Said Amir.
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The Turban for the Crown: The Islamic Revolution in Iran. London: Oxford University Press, 1988; Keddie, Nikki R. Roots of Revolution: An Interpretative History of Modern Iran. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981. Janice J. Terry
Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988) The Algiers Treaty of March 6, 1975, signed by Iran’s Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and then vice president of Iraq Saddam Hussein, was intended to solve longstanding border and waterway disputes between the two neighboring countries. However, with the overthrow of the shah in 1979, which put Iran in the hands of Islamic fundamentalists, the political dynamics changed. By 1980 Iran’s new leaders started to hint that they did not feel obligated by the shah’s earlier commitments, and Iraqi leaders were complaining that Iran still had not returned certain border areas promised under the 1975 treaty. In September 1980 Iraqi armed forces moved to reclaim those lands, and on September 22 they crossed the border into Iran. The invasion had consequences that Iraqi president Hussein had not expected. In launching the attack on Iran, Hussein thought the war would be brief and would lead to the downfall of Iran’s religious leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini, whom Hussein disliked. Instead, the power of Khomeini and other Islamic revolutionaries increased as Iranians united and rallied to support the war. Few had expected Iraq to win the war outright. Although Iraq had better technology, more weapons, and a stronger air force, Iran had three times the population and about four times the geographic area of Iraq. Thus the Iran-Iraq War seesawed back and forth for eight grueling years. Some methods of World War I were employed; Iran, for example, often conducted useless infantry attacks, using “human assault waves” made up in part by young, untrained conscripts, as in the Kerbala offensives, which were repulsed by the superior air- and firepower of the Iraqis. Iraq, concerned with the war’s trench warfare and stalemate, had its overtures for a peace agreement undercut when its reputation was tainted by United Nations reports that it had used deadly (and illegal) chemical weapons against Iranian troops in 1984. Although both Iran and Iraq attacked each other’s oil-tanker shipping in the Persian Gulf, Iran’s attacks on Kuwait’s and other gulf states’ tankers caused the
United States and several Western European nations to station battleships in the gulf to protect those tankers. This in turn led, on July 3, 1988, to the accidental shooting down of an Iranian civil airliner by the U.S. cruiser Vincennes, which killed all 290 crew members and passengers aboard. As many as 1 million people died in the Iran-Iraq War, approximately 1.7 million were wounded, about 1.5 million were forced to flee as refugees, and major cities were destroyed on both sides. The oil industries of both countries also suffered extensive damage due to the fighting; oil exports, and earnings from those exports, naturally dropped. More important, the large oil reserves of Iran and Iraq represented the potential for significant international economic power, but both nations had together largely wasted $400 billion on the war and along with that the chance to build up their societies. The effects of the war clearly reached beyond the two combatants. Iran’s need for additional weapons led to a compromising relationship for the administration of U.S. president Ronald Reagan in 1985. In the secret Iran-contra affair, Iran was able to obtain weapons from the United States (the country that Khomeini had called “the great Satan”) in exchange for the release of hostages in Lebanon. At about the same time U.S. aid of all types began to appear in Iraq, whereas the Soviet Union supplied about two-thirds of Iraq’s weapons. The Iran-Iraq War also ended Khomeini’s attempts to spread his fundamentalist Islamic revolution abroad. Although stymied in his ambitions to make Iraq the leading power in the Persian Gulf (and the Arab world), Iraqi president Hussein learned new fighting strategies that he would later use against another neighboring country, Kuwait, which had been his ally during the conflict. By the time a cease-fire finally arrived on August 20, 1988, the Iran-Iraq War had been the longest and most destructive conflict in the post–World War II era, and none of the basic friction points between Iran and Iraq had been settled. However, in August–September 1990, while Iraq was busy with its invasion of Kuwait, Iraq and Iran quietly restored diplomatic relations, and Iraq agreed to Iranian terms for the settlement of the war: the removal of Iraqi troops from Iranian territory, division of sovereignty over the Shatt al Arab waterway, and an exchange of prisoners of war. Further reading: El-Sayed El-Shazly, Nadia. The Gulf Tanker War. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998; Gieling, Saskia. Religion and War in Revolutionary Iran. New York:
Iraq revolution (1958)
I.B.Tauris, 1999; Hiro, Dilip. The Longest War: The IranIraq Military Conflict. New York: Routledge, 1991. Keith Bukovich
Iraq revolution (1958) The Hashemite dynasty in Iraq was overthrown in a bloody revolution in 1958. A group of disgruntled nationalistic army officers headed by General Abdul Karim Qassem and Colonel Abd al-Salam Arif copied the takeover of the Egyptian government by the Free Officers, led by Gamal Abdel Nasser, in 1952. On July 14, 1958, the Iraqi forces took over the radio station, post office, royal palace, and government centers in Baghdad. The royal family was killed. Nuri al-Said, the grand old man of Iraqi politics who had served as prime minister on numerous occasions, was captured trying to escape disguised as a woman and was torn apart by an angry mob. As violence mounted in the capital, the officers declared martial law and established a three-person sovereignty council of one Kurd, one Sunni, and one Shi’i, in an attempt to include the main sectarian groups in Iraq. Qassem became prime minister and minister of defense. Show trials were held of members of the ancien régime, and the new government announced its intention to purge the system of corruption and imperial control. Qassem was a notable champion for the poor and strongly supported eradicating the slum areas around Baghdad and providing low-cost housing. Under a new land reform program, property confiscated from the old ruling class was distributed to the peasants but without the formation of cooperatives or government planning as in Egypt. As a result, there was a decline in agricultural productivity. The new regime also focused on improving and widening access to education. In a highly popular move most of the oil industry, Iraq’s major source of income, was taken over. Politically Qassem played the Iraqi communists against the Arab nationalist forces, especially the Ba’ath Party. The new Iraqi regime supported both the Palestinian and Algerian nationalist movements and withdrew from the hated Western-dominated Cento, or Baghdad Pact. Internationally it drew closer to the Soviet Union. In the era of cold war politics the West, especially the United States, viewed the Iraqi revolution as a victory for the Soviets and blamed Nasser for the overthrow of the old monarchy.
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Although Nasser initially supported the new regime and was pleased at the collapse of the Hashemite monarchy, he had not actually been behind the takeover. Hoping to enlarge the pan-Arab movement and convince Iraq to join the United Arab Republic, Nasser invited Qassem to Egypt on several occasions, but Qassem found excuses to refuse, and the relationship between the two nations grew increasingly hostile. Suspected of plotting a coup, Arif was arrested in late 1958, but Qassem pardoned his old ally and permitted him to leave for Europe. Several attempted coups and an attempted assassination of Qassem by Ba’athists failed in 1959. Saddam Hussein was one of the plotters behind the failed assassination, and he subsequently fled to Egypt. Relationships between the government and the Kurds, led by Mustafa Barzani, also soured, and by 1961 a full-scale war was being waged between the Iraqi army and Kurdish nationalist forces. In the face of mounting political instability, Qassem’s personal behavior became more erratic. After Britain declared Kuwait an independent country, Qassem claimed it as an integral part of Iraq in 1961. British and Saudi troops moved into Kuwait to protect it, and Iraq was forced to withdraw its claim and recognize Kuwait as an independent nation. In 1963 a coup by army officers, including Arif, overthrew Qassem, who was taken prisoner. Although he pleaded for his life, Qassem was executed on orders given by Arif. Abd al-Salam Arif died in 1966, and his brother Abd al-Rahman Arif succeeded him, but the regime was plagued by political instability and the ongoing conflict with the Kurds. In the summer of 1968 Ba’athists led by Ahmed Hasan al-Bakr took over. To protect the new Ba’ath regime from domestic opposition, Bakr had his protégé Hussein control the internal security forces. Hussein gradually consolidated his power within the party and ruthlessly eliminated potential enemies. The new regime instituted a more far-reaching land reform program and nationalized the oil industry in 1972. Escalating oil revenues in the 1970s were used to build infrastructure, including road and communication lines, and to modernize the education and health care systems. The regime also negotiated a settlement with the Kurds, who obtained an autonomous region in the north. Relations with the Soviet Union were also strengthened. In 1979 Bakr, who had been in poor health for some time, stepped down in favor of Hussein, who ruled Iraq until his regime was overthrown in a U.S.-led military invasion in 2003.
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Further reading: Alnasrawi, Abbas. The Economy of Iraq: Oil, Wars, Destruction of Development and Prospects, 1950–2010. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994; Fernea, Robert A., and William Roger Louis, eds. The Iraqi Revolution of 1958: The Old Social Classes Revisited. London: I.B. Tauris, 1991; Shwadran, Benjamin. The Power Struggle in Iraq. New York: Council for Middle Eastern Affairs Press, 1960. Janice J. Terry
Iraq War
See Gulf War, Second (Iraq War).
Irish Republican Army (IRA) The Irish Republican Army (IRA) is a clandestine paramilitary organization that devoted itself to the removal of the British presence from Northern Ireland and the ending of the partition of the island. Though it was active since the Anglo-Irish War (1920–21), it gained international notoriety only in the last four decades of the 20th century. This campaign was waged against a number of (Protestant) loyalist militias, as well as the British army itself. The group’s aims were shared by the Sinn Féin political party, which was labeled the IRA’s “political wing” but that always officially disavowed any such connection. Although both groups claimed to speak for all of Ireland, neither enjoyed the support of more than a minority of Northern Ireland’s Catholic population. The roots of the IRA can be traced back to 1919. In that year, nationalist leader Michael Collins melded the various nationalist militias who had participated in the 1916 Easter Rising into a guerrilla army that would supplement the parliamentary maneuverings of the Sinn Féin–dominated Irish Daíl (parliament). Collins ordered the IRA against, first, the British intelligence and police forces in Ireland, and then the “Black and Tan” auxiliary forces that were deployed against them by the British government. Ultimately the IRA succeeded in forcing a truce with the British, the result of which was the negotiation of an Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921. Unhappy with the terms of this treaty, a minority of deputies, led by President Éamon de Valera, walked out of the Daíl and vowed to continue fighting for a republic. The IRA split as well. This led to the Irish Civil War
(1922–23), in which the pro-treaty Free State forces defeated the anti-treaty Republicans. After the civil war the Free State forces became the regular Irish army; the IRA was driven underground. This situation did not improve when de Valera and his new political party, Fianna Faíl, entered the Daíl in 1927 and were elected to power in 1932. Relations between de Valera, now a constitutional Republican, and the IRA worsened until finally, in 1935, the de Valera government declared the IRA an illegal organization. The 1938 Irish constitution achieved many of de Valera’s (and the IRA’s) stated objectives. However, it did not end partition, and thereafter the IRA’s sole raison d’être would be directed toward that end. The organization engaged in a bombing campaign on the British mainland during the late 1930s and gave some material support to German agents operating both in Britain and in the republic during World War II. Neither of these actions proved successful, and by the 1950s it was hard to view the IRA as anything but a spent force. The IRA was reborn out of the crisis that beset Northern Ireland in the late 1960s. Inspired by the U.S. Civil Rights movement, Catholics in Ulster began to demonstrate for better access to housing and fairer wages. In August 1969 the demonstrations deteriorated into rioting, police repression, and the eventual deployment of the British army. Initially the IRA was caught unawares, as the Belfast graffiti “IRA = I Ran Away” testifies. Largely as a result of this embarrassment, the IRA split in 1970. A group calling itself the “Provisional IRA” (or “Provos”) broke off and rededicated itself to a united Ireland through terrorist activity. Within two years the Provos had far surpassed the Officials in popular support, and the three-decades-long war that came to be known euphemistically as “the Troubles” had begun. In August 1971 the British government introduced a policy of internment of IRA suspects without charge for up to seven days. When by 1972 these methods had not deterred the IRA or contained the crisis, the Loyalist parliament at Stormont fell; Britain introduced direct rule of Northern Ireland from London, and internment was phased out. Beginning with the Troubles, IRA prisoners had enjoyed the status of political prisoners. In 1976 this status was abolished. The IRA turned to hunger strikes. Bobby Sands’s 66-day-long hunger strike, which lasted until his death on May 5, 1981, attracted international publicity. Any lasting benefit that might have resulted
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Further reading: Adams, Gerry. Cage Eleven. Boulder, CO: Roberts Rinehart Press, 1990; Coogan, Tim Pat. The IRA: A History. Boulder, CO: Roberts Rinehart Press, 1994; ———. The Troubles: Ireland’s Ordeal 1966–1996 and the Search for Peace. Boulder, CO: Roberts Rinehart Press, 1996; Moloney, Ed. A Secret History of the IRA. New York: W.W. Norton, 2002; Toolis, Martin. Rebel Hearts: Journeys Within the IRA’s Soul. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1995. Andrew Kellett
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A Republican poster, in support of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, in 1974, commemorates the 1916 Easter Rising.
for the IRA was canceled out by the negative reaction to the IRA’s assassination of Lord Mountbatten of Burma in August 1979, and its near miss of Margaret Thatcher in October 1984. Away from the world stage the cycle of attacks by, and reprisals against, the IRA continued apace. Hope for an end to the struggle surfaced in 1994, with a cease-fire brokered by Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams, British prime minister John Major, Irish taoiseach Albert Reynolds, and U.S. president Bill Clinton. After the ratification of the Good Friday accords in 1999 and the progress of the Northern Irish peace process, the relevance of the IRA was called into question. In 2005 the provisional IRA announced the end of its armed campaign. The organization surrendered its weapons under the supervision of United Nations inspectors.
Islamist movements flourished in many parts of the Muslim world in the late 20th century. These movements sought to revitalize Islam as a political force and to create Islamic governments that would rule under sharia (Islamic law). Islam is the world’s secondlargest religion, with 1.3 billion adherents, compared to Christianity, with 2.2 billion. It is the fastest-growing religion in Africa. The most predominantly Muslim states are in Africa and Asia, but substantial numbers of Muslims also live in the Western Hemisphere and Europe. With 57 member states, the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) was established in 1969 to represent Muslim interests. Islamist movements were particularly attractive to the large population of young people in Muslim states who were disillusioned by the failures of their governments to provide jobs or to open up authoritarian regimes to meaningful political participation. During the cold war authoritarian regimes in predominantly Muslim countries systematically crushed—often with tacit support of Western nations, especially the United States—all political opposition from the left. They refused to open up their systems to legitimate change. For many young Muslims, both Western capitalism and the Soviet model of state capitalism seemed to have failed to reform and revitalize their countries. Many also faced an identity crisis brought on by sweeping cultural changes and globalization that threatened old traditions and made the youth feel alienated from their own societies. Dynamic and forceful Islamic leaders stepped in to fill the void. Most contemporary Islamist movements have been influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood, established in the 1920s in Egypt. The writings of the
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Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat (left) and U.S. President Jimmy Carter in 1980. Sadat was killed in 1981 by Egyptian Islamists.
Egyptian Muslim activist Sayyid Qutb provided the philosophic underpinnings for many Islamist organizations. Qutb was executed by the Egyptian government in the 1960s and became a martyr in the eyes of many Muslims. By the latter part of the century, many young people considered the brotherhood too moderate and looked to a new generation of more radical activists. The 1979 Iranian revolution and the writings of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini also served as a model for future Islamic revolutions. The Iranian revolution also sparked a revival of Shi’i political and religious activism in nations with large Shi’i populations such as Lebanon and Iraq. radical organizations With its vast revenues from petroleum, Saudi Arabia financed madrasas (schools) teaching Wahhabism, their particular militant and puritanical brand of Islam, in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other nations. For many poor families these schools were the only way to provide any education for their children, who were then socialized in this narrow and inflexible interpretation of Islam. Many of the most radical Islamists were products of these schools. These schools also provided recruits for radical Islamist organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Much like Christian televangelists in the West, fiery activist imams also used the modern media of television, radio, and cassette tapes to proselytize converts to the Islamist programs. Disaffected youth in Europe, espe-
cially France and Great Britain, were heavily influenced by these leaders. Many Muslims were also angered by the failure to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict and the perceived support of the United States and other Western nations for Israel over the rights of the Palestinians to self-determination. Much opposition to the United States was based not so much on its values as on what it did in the Middle East. Following the killing of Muslims in Somalia, Bosnia, and Chechnya, many Muslims, whether correctly or not, concluded that the West valued its own victims more than it valued Muslim victims. Negative stereotyping of Muslims in much of the Western media also contributed to mounting hostility. The war against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s was another factor in the rise of Islamist movements. Many Muslim nations, especially Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, provided volunteers and financial support for the mujahideen (Muslim fighters), who fought a jihad (holy war) against the Soviet occupation. In the midst of the cold war many mujahideen were supported, trained, and armed by the United States. After the defeat and withdrawal of the Soviet Union from Afghanistan in 1989, many of these volunteers returned to their own countries, such as Algeria, where they sought to establish Islamic regimes by force if necessary. In Islam jihad is a defensive struggle to protect the community of believers from outside attack, as well as an internal struggle for spiritual enlightenment. The concept of jihad was sometimes used, or misused, by Islamists to justify violence and terrorism. These approaches were discredited and disavowed by some leading Muslim experts, who argued that the Qu’ran specifically forbids terrorism and suicide. egypt In Egypt following the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1970, his successor Anwar al-Sadat attempted to undercut the power of liberal leftists in his government by releasing members of the Muslim Brotherhood from prison and allowing them access to the print and electronic media. The brotherhood and more radical Islamists organizations such as the Islamic Liberation Organization and Holy Flight or Islamic Group soon turned against Sadat. They opposed the increasingly repressive regime as well as Sadat’s negotiations with Israel that resulted in the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. They gained members from among disaffected youth throughout the countryside, especially in upper Egypt. In 1981 Khaled al-Islambuli and other Islamists, who had infiltrated the military, assassinated Sadat.
They anticipated that Sadat’s death would lead to a massive popular uprising to overthrow the regime. Although some riots broke out in upper Egypt, especially in the town of Asyut, a center of opposition, the regime under Hosni Mubarak maintained control, and the Islamist organizations were brutally repressed. A long period of low-level warfare between government forces and Islamist rebels ensued. After Islamist rebels killed a number of tourists at Deir elBahari in upper Egypt in 1997, many Egyptians who were heavily dependent on tourist revenues spoke out against the radicals. However, because the government failed to provide much-needed housing and economic reforms and refused to open up the system to meaningful democratic participation, the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist movements remained major political forces. In Egypt the so-called new Islamists eschewed violence and argued that to combat extremism, social justice and educational reform were vital for the regeneration of Egyptian society. The new Islamists demonstrated remarkable political and social flexibility and supported reforms in education, gradualism, and peaceful dialogue. They included Yusuf alQaradawy; Kamal Abul Magd, a lawyer and former government official; and others. New Islamists wanted Islamic states based on wassatteyya, or moderate Islamic tradition, without violence or terrorism. sudan In the Sudan Hasan al-Turabi led the Islamist movement and was a major political force until he was removed from office by the military in the 1990s. In Tunisia the Islamic Tendency Movement (ITM), led by Rashid al-Ghannouchi, who had been educated at the Sorbonne, actively opposed the well-entrenched regime of Habib Bourguiba in the 1980s. In 1987 a number of ITM members were arrested and tried, but after Bourguiba was removed from office in a bloodless military coup led by General Zine al Abidine ben Ali, many of them were released or allowed to go into exile. Although ben Ali’s regime was able to provide some economic stability, it too became increasingly authoritarian, and ben Ali tightened control over the Islamist parties in the 1990s. Ghannouchi went into exile to Europe and renounced violence. algeria and lebanon In Algeria the major Islamist party, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), was led by Abbas Madani, a professor of psychology; Sheikh Ben Azzouz; and Ali Belhadj, a charismatic and popular preacher. When
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the FIS won the first round of free and democratic elections in 1991, the military regime of the National Liberation Front (FLN) cancelled the elections, precipitating a civil war that resulted in tens of thousands of deaths. Many FIS leaders were jailed until 2003. Madani then seemed to drop out of politics, but Belhadj remained unrepentant. As long as the Algerian government failed to solve the basic problems of jobs, housing, and education, Algerian youth—who made up a large percentage of the population—continued to be attracted to Islamist parties. During the 1980s Hizbollah (Party of God), led by Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, a leading Shi’i cleric, emerged as a major force among Shi’i Lebanese, the largest but most disaffected Lebanese sect. Hizbollah actively fought against the continued Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, and when Israel finally withdrew from most of southern Lebanon in 2000, Hizbollah gained most of the credit. Hizbollah then transformed itself into a major political force, and its members were elected to a number of seats in Parliament. It also continued to attack Israeli forces in the disputed Lebanese territory of Shaaba Farms, which Israel argued was Syrian territory. Hizbollah sometimes attacked within Israeli borders as well and was viewed by Israel and the United States as a terrorist organization. In retaliation Israeli launched a major air, sea, and ground offensive into Lebanon in 2006. As in the 1982 Israeli war against the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Lebanon, the 2006 attack not only inflicted heavy losses on Hizbollah but it also devastated the Lebanese infrastructure and caused many civilian deaths. Many Lebanese and even secular Arabs were impressed by Hizbollah’s determined military defense against the Israeli attack, and the war actually led to an increase of support and recruits among many Lebanese and Muslims. palestine Similarly Hamas, the major Palestinian Islamist organization, began in the late 1980s in the Gaza Strip as a reaction to the long Israeli occupation. Hamas was led by Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, who was blind and confined to a wheelchair, and Dr. Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, both of whom were killed by Israel. Many Palestinians, who were overwhelmingly supportive of the secular PLO, hoped that the 1993 Oslo Accords would lead to a truly independent Palestinian state. However, when the PLO-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) came to be perceived as increasingly
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August 14, 2007: Images of Hizbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah are seen among scores of Hizbollah and Lebanese national flags being waved by Hizbollah supporters during a ceremony to mark the first anniversary of the war with Israel.
ineffective and corrupt and when the Israeli military occupation and continued takeover of Palestinian land for Jewish settlements continued, many young Palestinians turned to Hamas and other more radical Islamist organizations. Some adopted the tactic of suicide missions directed not only against the Israeli military but against Israeli civilians inside Israel’s 1967 borders, or the so-called green line. Hamas won the fair and open elections in 2006, and Ismail Haniya, a popular Hamas leader from Gaza, became the prime minister over the PA. Increased Israeli repression and refusal to deal with Hamas contributed to further disillusionment and anger. During the 1980s–1990s even secular Turkey saw an Islamic revival; Islamic parties became increasingly influential and won democratic elections in the 1990s. However, the Islamic movement in Turkey and in other
Muslim states is not a coordinated monolith. Islamist parties vary greatly both in their outlook regarding what sort of Islamic states they would like to see and their social and political programs. For example, in some, like the Taliban and al-Qaeda, women play no political role whatsoever. The Taliban was opposed to education for women and banned music and the depiction of the human form in books, even medical textbooks. In contrast, women play an active role in both Hizbollah and Hamas. As authoritarian regimes in Muslim nations as diverse as Egypt, Algeria, and Tunisia refused to liberalize the political system and failed to provide much-needed economic improvements, especially in housing and education, Islamic movements and parties remained popular and continued to attract large numbers of disaffected youth.
Further reading: Baker, Raymond William. Islam without Fear: Egypt and the New Islamists. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003; Donohue, John J., and John L. Esposito, eds. Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006; Esposito, John L., ed. Political Islam: Revolution, Radicalism, or Reform? Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1997; Fuller, Graham E. The
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Future of Political Islam. New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2004; Kepel, Gilles. The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004. Janice J. Terry
J Janata Party The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), or Indian People’s Party, is a pro-Hindu Indian political party that formed the main opposition to the Congress Party in postindependence India. It defeated the Congress Party in the 1977 general election. The BJP asserts that the Indian government should follow Hindu principles and values and has been highly critical of the secular policies espoused by the Congress Party. It has attracted the sympathies of high-caste Hindus and has an electoral stronghold in the northern part of the country. Its success in securing a larger following among the lower castes has not been complete. The fortunes of the party have been linked to the intensity of anti-Muslim feeling in the country, and it has been repeatedly accused of political and religious extremism. The forerunner of the BJP was the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), or Indian People’s Association, established in 1951 as the political faction of the Hindu paramilitary group Rashtriya Swayamesevak Sangh (RSS, National Volunteers Corps) by Shyama Prasad Mukherjee. The BJS started to gain support in the northern regions of India in the late 1960s, defeating the Congress Party in the state election in 1967. Ten years later the leader of the BJS, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, formed, together with other minor political parties, the Janata Party and successfully challenged the premiership of Indira Gandhi. In the general election of 1976, the Janata Party was able to capi-
talize on the discontent caused by the authoritarian methods of Gandhi and on the corruption charges leveled against her, her family, and government. The Janata Party won the majority of seats in Parliament and obtained the external support of the communists. Morarji Desai, a veteran fighter for the country’s independence, became prime minister, but the Janata government collapsed in 1979, after only two years, because of factionalism. After the Desai government collapsed the Janata Party was dissolved, and the BJP was formed under the leadership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. It started to appeal to the Indian masses in the late 1980s, when it campaigned to build a Hindu temple in an area of Uttar Pradesh considered sacred but already occupied by the Muslim Babri Mosjid mosque. The mosque was eventually destroyed in 1992 by organizations that many considered allies of the BJP. The demolition of the mosque caused widespread rioting throughout the nation. Yet the party obtained a surprising electoral victory in 1996, becoming the largest political party in the lower house of Parliament. In 1998 Vajpayee formed a coalition government, in power for only 13 months. Vajpayee contested the 1999 election, leading the BJP to become the first party of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), a coalition of parties against the Congress. Because of this electoral success he was once again appointed prime minister, governing for a full term until 2004, when he unexpectedly lost the general election to the Congress, 227
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led by Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, the widow of Indira Gandhi’s son Rajiv. Further reading: Malik, Yogendra, and K. V. B. Singh. Hindu Nationalists in India: The Rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994; www.janataparty.com (cited June 2006); Mishra, Patit Paban. “India, A Profile.” In Encyclopedia of Modern Asia. D. Levinson and K. Christensen, eds. Vol. 3, pp. 22–25. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2002. Luca Prono
Al Jazeera Al Jazeera (meaning “Island” or “Peninsula”), the Arab satellite TV news station, was established in Qatar in 1996. Start-up investment was provided by the Qatari emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani. In stark contrast to the government-controlled media throughout the Arab world, Al Jazeera quickly earned a reputation and a widespread global audience for its independent programming and content. With a motto of “the opinion and the other opinion,” Al Jazeera covered the activities and political philosophy of Osama bin Laden as early as 1999. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, bin Laden sent the station cassettes with his political messages. Journalists and talk show hosts at Al Jazeera covered hitherto forbidden topics such as the human rights and political failures of Arab regimes. They also interviewed Israelis on a wide variety of issues. Al Jazeera earned the enmity of Arab governments, many of which made no secret of their desire to preempt or stop its programs. Al Jazeera’s talk shows focused on sensitive subjects. Al Jazeera’s independent coverage was initially praised in the West, but after the station carried negative stories about the U.S. war and subsequent occupation in Iraq from 2003 onward, the United States, under the George W. Bush administration, publicly criticized Al Jazeera’s coverage as biased. At the same time, the United States was accused of planting or paying for positive stories to be carried in the Iraqi media. The success of Al Jazeera in attracting a huge audience demonstrated the impact of technology and highlighted the importance of information sources to audiences around the world in the 21st century. See also Gulf War, Second (Iraq War); World Trade Center, September 11, 2001.
Further reading: El-Nawawy, Mohammed, and Adel Iskandar. Al Jazeera: How the Free Arab News Network Scooped the World and Changed the Middle East. Cambridge, MA: Westview Press, 2002; Rushing, Josh. Mission Al Jazeera: Build a Bridge, Seek the Truth, Change the World. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Janice J. Terry
Jesus movement The Jesus movement flourished in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States and Europe. Young people involved in the hippie, or counterculture, movement were targeted by unorthodox evangelists or found their own way to Christianity. Previous experimentation with drugs, Eastern religion, the occult, and communal lifestyles affected the way these young Christians approached their faith. Just as important was the deep alienation many young people felt toward “anyone over thirty” and the traditional or conventional institutions, including the churches, they controlled. Culturally quite conservative, older church people were often offended by the clothes and hairstyles favored by the young and adamantly resisted making any concessions to their sensibilities or desires regarding worship. Originally based in innovative churches, Jesus movement churches served as bases for vigorous evangelism on university campuses, beaches, and the streets. Many Jesus people joined more traditional churches, usually evangelical Protestant but also Catholic, Orthodox, or Episcopal. By the 1980s–1990s most evangelical churches had accommodated the worship styles and sensibilities pioneered by the Jesus movement. For many the belief in an imminent apocalypse led to an interest in “prophecy,” which often became a conduit for conservative politics during the cold war. Perhaps ironically, the Jesus movement helped lay the foundation for the New Christian Right. Contemporary evangelical Protestantism was deeply affected by the Jesus movement, absorbing its moral intensity. The latter can be seen most vividly in the revolution that has occurred in worship and popular Christian music. Further reading: Di Sabatinio, David. The Jesus Movement: An Annotated Bibliography and General Resouce. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999; Ellwood, Robert S. One Way:
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The Jesus Movement and its Meaning. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1973. John Haas
Jiang Zemin (Chiang Tse-min) (1926– ) Chinese leader
Jiang Zemin was the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1989 until 2002, and the president of the People’s Republic of China from 1993 until 2003. Jiang was born in 1926, at Yangzhou, Jiangsu (Kiangsu) Province. He joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1946. In the same year he studied at Jiaotong (Chaio-t’ung) University in Shanghai, graduating with a degree in electrical engineering. At the end of the Chinese civil war Jiang was appointed commercial counselor at the Chinese embassy in Moscow, a post he held until 1956. He was appointed assistant to the minister, First Ministry of Machine Building, running the Changchun First Automobile Plant. In September 1978, he became vice chairman of the Society of Mechanical Engineering, the position he held before the Cultural Revolution. He then became vice minister on the State Commission on Imports and Exports in 1980, and vice minister of the electronics industries two years later. In 1983 he became minister of electronics industries, a post he held until 1985, when he became mayor of Shanghai. In 1982 Jiang became a member of the Central Committee of the CCP, and in 1987 he joined the Politburo. A supporter of China’s then paramount leader Deng Xiaoping (Teng Hsaio-p’ing), Jiang was also a political ally of the premier Li Peng during the suppression of the pro-democracy student demonstrations in 1989. Subsequently Jiang succeeded Zhao Ziyang (Chao Tzu-jang) as general secretary of the CCP on June 24, and was also elevated to the Politburo Standing Committee. Later that year he succeeded Deng as chairman of the CCP’s central military commission. Four years later, on March 27, 1993, Jiang became president of the National People’s Congress, and hence the head of state of China. When Deng Xiaoping died in 1997, Jiang rose to become paramount leader. He was economically more conservative than Deng, who had been critical of the slow pace of some reforms. However, he started a program of privatization, which loosened state control over 300,000 industrial concerns. The massive economic growth that resulted saw the Chinese economy boom and the emerging business class flourigh, many
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of whom were encouraged to join the CCP. In December 2001 China gained membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO), a move that would have been unimaginable only 10 years earlier. The Chinese economy then started growing at an even faster pace. In foreign affairs, Jiang improved Chinese relations with the United States and many other countries in the West. In 1997 he took part in the first U.S.-China summit conference, and at a follow-up meeting in the next year he openly defended China’s human-rights record. In 2001 Beijing won the contest to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, a move that marked China’s emergence from the self-imposed policy of isolation of previous decades. On November 15, 2002, Jiang resigned as general secretary of the CCP and, on March 15, 2003, from the presidency of the National People’s Congress. He was succeeded by Hu Jintao in a remarkably smooth transition, but remained the chair of the central military commission until September 2004. He remained an influential figure in Chinese politics. See also Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China (1966–1976). Further reading: Kuhn, Robert Lawrence. The Man Who Changed China: The Life and Legacy of Jiang Zemin. New York: Random House, 2005; Lam, Willy Wo-Lap. The Era of Jiang Zemin. Singapore: Prentice Hall, 1999. Justin Corfield
John Paul II
(1920–2005) pope Karol Józef Wojtyła (Voy-TEE-wah) was born on May 18, 1920, to Emilia Kaczorowska and Karol Wojtyła, a lieutenant in the Polish army. The couple had two other children years earlier: a daughter, who died in infancy, and Edmund, who became a medical doctor. When Karol Józef was born, the family lived in Wadowice, Poland, in a flat owned by a Jewish family, directly across from St. Mary’s church, where Karol was baptized. His father retired from the army in 1927. Karol’s mother died in 1929. Edmund died three years later in Kraków. Karol and his father would live together until the latter’s death in Kraków at the start of the German occupation, while Karol was still a teenager. From 1939 to 1945, Wojtyła eked out an education. Before the Gestapo shut down the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, he had begun studies in Polish
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John Paul II
The spiritual leader of the world’s Catholics, Pope John Paul II traveled the continents, including visits to the United States (above). The pope was a political leader as well, and during his pontificate, 83 countries established diplomatic relations with the Holy See.
philology. Professors who escaped deportation opened an underground university, which Wojtyła attended. To support himself, he worked in a rock quarry and later in a chemical plant, surrounding himself with books and teaching himself languages. From his father and parish priests in Wadowice, Wojtyła had learned the importance of prayer. In occupied Kraków, prayer was his lifeline to hope. There young Wojtyła met Jan Tyranowski, a tailor, mystic, and spiritual director. Tyranowski created what he called a “living Rosary”: a group of 15 young men who received from him spiritual instruction and who were commissioned to pass it on to other young people. From Tyranowski, Wojtyła learned contemplative prayer, especially the spirituality of St. John of the Cross. After his father’s death in February 1941, Wojtyła joined Archbishop Sapieha’s underground seminary and was ordained by him in November 1946. Sent to Rome, Wojtyła earned the first of two doctoral degrees in theology. Upon his return, Fr. Wojtyła had to devise ways to disguise his ministry. Throughout the 1950s he published
plays, poems, and articles under an alias; chaperoned college students on hiking and kayaking trips to teach the faith without observation; and counseled engaged couples on marital sexuality. He taught at two universities, as a professor of philosophy at the Jagiellonian, and of social ethics at the Catholic University of Lublin. In 1958 Pius XII named Wojtyła auxiliary bishop of Kraków, and in 1963 Paul VI appointed him that city’s archbishop. The Second Vatican Council (1962–65) brought the young archbishop to Rome, into the company of bishops from everywhere. Wojtyła spoke frequently in assemblies large and small, helped draft documents such as the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes (The Church in the Modern World), and published poetry and articles for the people back home describing what the council meant for the church. Karol Wojtyła was made a cardinal in 1967 and remained archbishop of Kraków for 15 years. He led a synod for the archdiocese, which met 119 times over seven years. He strengthened the seminary and the Jagiellonian theology faculty, inaugurated marriage
preparation programs and family ministries, encouraged youth movements, organized parish-based charitable committees, and made lengthy visitations to his parishes. He continued teaching and publishing without letup. When Paul VI died in August 1978, Cardinal Wojtyła participated in the conclave that elected Albino Luciani, whose double name John Paul signaled his wish to continue the work of popes John XXIII and Paul VI. Wojtyła returned to Kraków. But the new pope died a month later. Wojtyła departed again for Rome, fearing that he might remain there. He did eventually return, but not as archbishop. On October 16, 1978, Cardinal Wojtyła was elected the 264th successor of Peter and the first Polish pope ever. Like Luciani, he took the double name of John Paul. Immediately, the whirlwind of activities that characterized his papacy began: visits to parishes in Rome, travels outside the Vatican, meetings, writings, and long hours prostrate in prayer. Within three months, his marathon series of international journeys began with a pastoral visit to Mexico. In June 1979, much to the dismay of the communist government, he made the first of several visits to Poland. The Soviet authorities realized that this pope was dangerous. On May 13, 1981, Mehmet Ali Ag˘ca, hired by the Bulgarian secret police at the behest of the Soviet KGB, shot John Paul as he rode through St. Peter’s Square. The wound was serious but not fatal. Though recovery was slow and fraught with complications, the pope resumed his travels as soon as he could, even visiting Poland again in 1983. The most widely traveled pope in history, John Paul II visited a total of 129 countries, plus 145 trips within Italy, and visits to 317 of the 328 parishes in the diocese of Rome. John Paul intended his papacy to address two major goals. First, he wished to implement Vatican II, a council full of hope for the church’s future. He promulgated in 1983 the revised Code of Canon Law for the Latin Church, and in 1990 the revised Code for the Eastern Churches, both built on council teachings. To restore clarity to church teaching, he commissioned the publication of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. He delivered hundreds of catechetical addresses. In 14 papal encyclicals, 15 apostolic exhortations, 45 “apostolic letters,” and numerous other writings, he taught on morality, life issues, the dignity of work, the dignity of women, the role of the family, the nature of the Trinity, and the meaning of the Creed. To provide models of the holiness called for in Vatican II, John Paul canonized 1,342 saints,
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more than the combined total of persons canonized since the 16th century. A second goal was to prepare the church for the advent of the third millennium, an era John Paul saw as a springtime of hope. To that end, he announced a “new evangelization” of the world. His biennial World Youth Days attracted millions of young people from the world over. His first encyclical, published in 1979, had mentioned this jubilee as the beginning of a “new Advent” of the Son of God in human history. A pope is a political, as well as a religious, leader. He is widely credited with a major role in the 1989 collapse of European communism. Perseverance, back-door negotiations, and providential coincidences resulted in the creation of diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the state of Israel in 1993. During John Paul’s pontificate, 83 countries established diplomatic relations with the Holy See. Through dogged effort, his ambassadors at the United Nations were able to forestall activist efforts to reshape marriage and promote abortion on demand at the 1994 Cairo and 1995 Beijing women’s conferences. But some problems proved insurmountable. The number of priests and seminarians continued to decline during John Paul’s papacy. Radical feminists persisted in challenging the church’s refusal to ordain women to the priesthood. Ecumenical dialogue with most Orthodox churches stalled. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, excommunicated in 1988 for ordaining bishops without authorization, died unreconciled despite efforts to reinstate him. The pope was criticized for appointing weak bishops and for failing to reform religious orders. John Paul’s decline in health appeared to begin after the 1981 assassination attempt. Intestinal disorders and a series of falls in the early 1990s led to repeated hospitalizations. In 1994 he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, which gradually sapped his physical strength. On April 2, 2005, he died of complications from Parkinson’s. Karol Wojtyła’s reign as John Paul II lasted 26 years and 5 months, the thirdlongest papal tenure up to that time. Further reading: O’Brien, Darcy. The Hidden Pope: The Personal Journey of John Paul II and Jerzy Kluger. New York: Daybreak Books, 1998; Ratzinger, Cardinal Josef, and Giancarlo Giuliani. The Legacy of John Paul II. Fort Collins, CO: Ignatius Press; Weigel, George. Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II. New York: Harper Collins Cliff Street Books, 1999. R. Dennis Walters
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Johnson, Lyndon B. (1908–1973) U.S. president
Lyndon Baines Johnson, nicknamed LBJ, was the 36th president of the United States. Prior to that, he had been vice president during the presidency of John F. Kennedy. He is best remembered for presiding over the United States during the Vietnam War, and also for his efforts in promoting Civil Rights in the southern parts of the United States. Lyndon Johnson was born on August 27, 1908, at Gillespie County, Texas, the eldest of five children. His father was Sam Ealy Johnson Jr., a businessman who was also a member of the Texas House of Representatives, and his mother was Rebekah (née Baines), who was the daughter of Joseph Baines, another state legislator. Johnson left high school in 1924, and, after three years working in odd jobs, he studied at the Southwest Texas State Teachers College at San Marcos, Texas, and then taught at Cotulla, Texas. In 1930 Johnson worked for Democrat Richard Kleberg, who was standing for Congress, accompanying him to Washington, D.C., when he was elected. Four years later he married Claudia Alta Taylor, who became known as “Lady Bird.” It was in Washington that Johnson came to meet Sam Rayburn, the Texan chairman of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce. Johnson became director of the National Youth Administration for two years and then stood as a Democratic Party candidate for the 10th congressional district, winning his seat. Johnson won a seat in the Senate in 1948 and spent 12 years there, becoming Democratic whip in 1951, minority leader in 1953, and majority leader in 1955. Johnson survived a serious heart attack in 1955, and became well known for his negotiating talent, using bluster, discipline, persuasiveness, and ruthlessness. In 1960 Johnson lost the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination to Kennedy by 809 to 409 on the first ballot. He then accepted the vice-presidential slot. As vice president, Johnson found himself unable to do much of the negotiating that he had enjoyed. On November 22, 1963, when Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson took the oath of office as president on Air Force One, the presidential plane, just before it took off from Love Field, Dallas, to take Kennedy’s body back to Washington. Johnson immediately set up a commission to investigate the assassination, appointing Earl Warren, chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, to chair it.
Lyndon B. Johnson takes the oath of office on Air Force One following the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Johnson had a hard task maintaining the dignity and authority of the office of the president and ensuring some form of continuity. He had long been a supporter of civil rights, and in February 1964 managed to get the Civil Rights Act introduced in Congress. It was passed by the Senate in June 1964. After it was signed into law on July 2, 1964, ending segregation and any discrimination on grounds of race or sex, the law was challenged in the Supreme Court, which found it was valid. Hoping for the success of this legislation, Johnson made his famous speech on May 22, 1964, at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in which he announced his plans for the “Great Society.” In 1964 the Republican Party chose Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater to run against Johnson, giving the incumbent an easier election campaign than he had expected. Johnson won 486 of the electoral college seats to 52 for Goldwater, with Johnson taking 61 percent of the vote, the largest percentage ever taken in a presidential election. The emerging problem for Johnson was, however, the growing war in Vietnam. In August 1964 news stories revealed that North Vietnamese gunboats had attacked a U.S. destroyer and then launched another attack several days later. It subsequently emerged that the second attack had not taken place, and there are many doubts over the nature of the first attack. Nevertheless Johnson did believe that the U.S. destroyers had been attacked and launched a retaliatory air strike against North Vietnam. He also managed to get Congress to approve the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving
him the authority to do whatever was needed to deal with the communists in Vietnam. Public support for the war effort fell as the United States suffered huge casualties. By 1967 there were large demonstrations, and by 1968 Johnson had become increasingly unpopular. On January 23, 1968, the USS Pueblo, an American intelligence-gathering ship, was seized by North Korea after ending up in their waters. The crew of 80 were all captured and held for 11 months until the U.S. government apologized and obtained their release, later retracting their apology. Johnson had ordered the USS Enterprise into the region, but acted with caution. In the week after the seizing of the Pueblo, the Vietcong launched the Tet Offensive, with television coverage of Vietcong capturing the U.S. embassy. General William Westmoreland had promised that the war was nearly over three months earlier. The United States and South Vietnam quickly managed to defeat the Vietcong attacks, but most people refused to believe the administration’s protestations that victory was close. Johnson decided not to contest the election and on March 31, 1968, in a national address on television, stated that he would neither seek nor accept the Democrat Party’s renomination. The 1968 election campaign saw the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the African-American civil rights leader, on April 4, leading to rioting in Washington, D.C., and many other cities. The assassination of presidential candidate and former attorney general Robert F. Kennedy in Los Angeles on June 6 resulted in widespread political unease. Vice President Hubert Humphrey was guaranteed the Democrat Party nomination when the party convention was held in Chicago, but antiwar protestors converged on the city intent on making their opposition to the war heard. Johnson tried to help Humphrey, who called for an unconditional U.S. halt to the bombing of North Vietnam, and in October, a week before the election, Johnson announced the end of all U.S. bombing to open the way for peace talks. It was too late for many people, and they voted for Richard Nixon. In January 1969 Johnson retired to his L.B.J. Ranch near Johnson City, Texas. Johnson suffered a heart attack, and died on January 22, 1973, in San Antonio, Texas, only five days before the Paris Peace Accords stopped the fighting in Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson was buried at his ranch. Further reading: Barrett, David M. Uncertain Warriors: Lyndon Johnson and His Vietnam Advisers. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993; Brands, H. W. The Wages of Glo-
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balism: Lyndon Johnson and the Limits of American Power. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995; Goldsmith, John A. Colleagues: Richard B. Russell and His Apprentice, Lyndon B. Johnson. Washington D.C.: Seven Locks Press, 1993; Henggeler, Paul R. In His Steps: Lyndon Johnson and the Kennedy Mystique. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1991; Herring, George C. L.B.J. and Vietnam: A Different Kind of War. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994. Justin Corfield
Jordan, Hashemite monarchy in For most of Jordan’s modern history, Jordanians knew only one king as architect of the kingdom’s domestic development and of its foreign policy. King Hussein consolidated the Hashemite regime in Jordan and defended it against internal and external challenges, neither of which were in short supply. From the foundation of the Hashemite state onward, Jordan maintained close strategic ties to Britain and later the United States. After World War II, and with the onset of the cold war, Jordan also established stronger links with the United States. Western powers came to view Jordan as a conservative bulwark against communism and radical forms of Pan-Arabism, and as a moderating element in the Arab-Israeli conflict. From the beginning, then, Jordan had close ties to powerful Western states and depended heavily on foreign aid from these countries to keep the kingdom afloat. Jordan’s centrality in Middle East politics and geography also carried with it a strategic vulnerability. In the 1950s, when the kingdom was still young and viewed by many Pan-Arab nationalists as an artificial “paper tiger,” some Jordanian officials feared that another regional conflict might eliminate the Hashemite state entirely. In 1957 Hussein headed off an attempted coup d’état by pro-Nasserist military officers and used the opportunity to solidify Hashemite royal control. By the late 1960s the regime was forced to focus outward once again as regional tensions escalated especially between Israel and Gamal Abdel Nasser’s regime in Egypt. In the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Israeli forces launched what they viewed as a preemptive strike on Arab forces in Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, inflicting a devastating defeat on all three countries. The complete failure of the Arab war effort led to Israeli occupation of the Sinai from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, and East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan. In less than six days, Jordan lost some of its most prized territory, including the agriculturally rich West
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Jordan, Hashemite monarchy in
Bank and the more religiously significant East Jerusalem. Tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees poured across the border into Jordan in June 1967, changing the demographics and ultimately the domestic stability of the kingdom. That uneasy situation collapsed in September 1970, when guerrilla forces of the Palestine Liberation Organization fought the royalist forces of the Hashemite government. This Jordanian civil war resulted in a bloody Hashemite victory and the expulsion of PLO guerrilla forces from Jordan. More than half the population of Jordan today is of Palestinian origin. Although this West Bank/East Bank ethnic divide is sometimes overstated, it remains a significant feature of Jordan’s society, its political economy, and of the Jordanian state itself. Much of the Jordanian government, public sector, and military is dominated by East Bank Jordanians, while much of the private sector is dominated by Palestinians. Following the disastrous 1967 war, the Hashemite regime maintained its claim to the West Bank and East Jerusalem for two decades. But in 1988 in the midst of the first Intifada, it renounced these claims and turned instead toward consolidating its rule east of the Jordan River. Indeed, Jordan remained under martial law from the 1967 war until it was lifted in 1992 as part of the overall political liberalization process. The regime’s concerns for stability were underscored dramatically in 1989 by domestic unrest triggered by an economic austerity program initiated under the aegis of the International Monetary Fund. With the intifada raging west of the Jordan River, and domestic unrest erupting in Jordan itself, King Hussein initiated measures to address public demands and to reestablish the stability of the regime. That opening
helped reestablish the regime’s base of domestic support, thereby shoring up its stability and allowing it to sign a controversial peace treaty with the State of Israel in 1994. In 1999 King Hussein died after a long battle with cancer. In a surprise move, the king had abruptly changed the line of succession merely weeks before his death, dismissing his brother Hasan as crown prince and appointing instead his eldest son, Abdullah. With Hussein’s death, King Abdullah II ascended the Hashemite throne. His reign was marked by strong efforts to continue the economic liberalization process, emphasizing a neoliberal model of development and shoring up Jordan’s relations with key Western powers and international economic institutions. But this emphasis on economic development and stable foreign relations also forced political liberalization to a lower priority level. Under Abdullah, the kingdom survived still more regional unrest and even began battling terrorism within Jordan itself. These internal and external security concerns did not dissuade the monarchy from its emphasis on economic development, but they often provided the pretext for lack of progress in reviving Jordan’s seemingly stalled program of political liberalization. Further reading: al-Madfai, Madiha Rashid. Jordan, the United States and the Middle East Peace Process, 1974–1991. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993; Ryan, Curtis R. Jordan in Transition: From Hussein to Abdullah. Boulder CO: Lynne Reinner, 2002; Satloff, Robert B. From Abdullah to Hussein: Jordan in Transition. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Curtis R. Ryan
K Karmal, Babrak
(1929–1997) Afghan politician Babrak Karmal was an Afghan revolutionary figure, a politician, and an ambassador. He served as the third president of Afghanistan from 1980 to 1986 during the rule of the communist Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. An effective orator and an educated politician, Karmal is best known as one of the founders of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) and for leading a puppet regime with Soviet financial and military support. Born in Kamari, a small village east of Kabul on January 6, 1929, Karmal came from a wealthy Tajik military family. His father, Major General Mohammad Hussain, had close relations with the royal family, especially King Mohammad Zahir and Prime Minister General Mohammad Daoud. After graduating from high school Karmal enrolled in law school, pursuing a degree in law and political science, at the Kabul University in 1951. While a student he was arrested and put in prison for five years for organizing demonstrations in support of an Afghani popular revolutionary figure, Abdul Rahman Mahmudi. In prison he befriended pro–Soviet Union leftist political figures like Mear Mohammad Siddeq Farhang. Karmal increasingly became a staunch supporter of the Leninist-Stalinist form of Marxism, identifying the Soviet model as the best way to modernize Afghanistan. After graduation Karmal continued his close relations with Farhang. The friendship enabled him to play
a major role in establishing the PDPA on January 1, 1965, Afghanistan’s first major Marxist political party. Like many other PDPA members who aimed for parliamentary seats, Karmal became a candidate and was elected to the National Assembly from 1965 to 1973, where he was able to gain a reputation for his antireligious and anti-imperialistic communist viewpoints. Due to internal ideological differences the PDPA split into the Khalq (People) and the Parcham (Flag) factions in 1967. Karmal became the leader of the more cosmopolitan, moderate Parcham bloc. Karmal’s faction shared power with Mohammad Daoud’s regime after the coup d’état of 1973, when the monarchy was overthrown. Though the alliance was short-lived, since Daoud dismissed the Parcham faction from the presidential cabinet, Karmal was able to reunite the PDPA after much Soviet pressure. In April 1978 the PDPA gained power through a military coup. When Nur Mohammad Taraki, a member of the Khalq bloc, was pronounced the president of the new Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA), instituting a regime that had the full backing of the Soviet Union until 1992, the two factions of PDPA began internal fighting. Karmal and his mistress, Anahita Ratebzad, were sent into “exile” as ambassadors to Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, respectively, while Hifizullah Amin, another major Khalq political leader, became the prime minister on March 28, 1979. Karmal later left Prague for Moscow for fear of assassination or execution on his return to Kabul. On December 5, 1978, when the Taraki government initiated a major friendship treaty with 235
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the Soviet Union, numerous uprisings spread around Afghanistan against the Soviet-backed regime. Taraki’s radical reform projects for transforming Afghanistan from a traditional religious to a secular modern society led the way to the rise of the mujahideen (or Muslim fighters), who opposed the Soviet-style westernization of the country. Tensions between Taraki and Amin factions within the Khalq bloc led to the assassination of Taraki on October 10, 1979, which eventually led to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on December 27, 1979. Karmal, the leader of the Parcham faction, returned to Kabul with the full support of the Soviets and was declared the president. As the third president of the republic, Karmal’s most important accomplishments were his call for clemency for political prisoners, the change of the Marxist-style national flag, the promulgation of the basic principles of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, the recognition of the Muslim clerical establishment, and the compensation for the loss of property. Karmal’s poor leadership skills and his inability to bring an end to the ongoing guerrilla warfare between the Soviet-backed government and the mujahideen gradually made him a highly unpopular figure. With the full backing of Moscow throughout his presidency, Karmal was regarded as a Soviet puppet, both domestically and internationally. In May 1986 Karmal was replaced as the communist leader by Mohammad Najibullah, and in October 1986 he was relieved of the presidency. After a number of trips between the Soviet Union and Afghanistan after his presidency, Karmal finally settled in Moscow, where he died of liver dysfunction on December 6, 1996. Further reading: Edwards, David B. Before Taliban Genealogies of the Afghan Jihad. Berkeley: University of California, 2002; Kaplan, Robert D. Soldiers of God: With the Mujahidin in Afghanistan. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990. Babak Rahimi
Karzai, Hamid
(1957– ) Afghan president Hamid Karzai was the first elected president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. At the conclusion of the presidential election on October 9, 2004, Karzai was declared its winner, with 55.4 percent of the vote. On December 7, 2004, Karzai took the oath of office as the first democratically elected leader of Afghanistan.
Hamid Karzai was born on December 24, 1957, in the village of Karz, near Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. His grandfather, Khair Mohammed Khan, was a key figure in Afghanistan’s war of independence. Karzai’s father, Abdul Ahad Karzai, was a popular national figure who was also an influential member of the parliament during the 1960s. The early education of Hamid Karzai took place in various Afghan schools, including Mahmood Hotaki Elementary School, Sayeed Jamaluddin Afghani School, and Habibia High School. Later, Karzai went to India, where he received graduate education in international relations and political science from the Himachal Pradesh University in Simla. After the formation of the mujahideen government in 1989, Karzai was made the director of the Foreign Relations Section in the Office of the President, Burhauddin Rabbani. He became a deputy foreign minister in 1992. When the civil war between the contending mujahideen groups engulfed Afghanistan in 1994, Karzai resigned from his official position. He strove for a free and open national assembly (loya jirga). In August 2000, when the fundamentalist Taliban regime was ruling Afghanistan, Karzai formed resistance groups and vowed to oust them from power. There was an element of personal revenge to his actions, as his father had been assassinated by the Taliban. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, Karzai, in coordination with U.S. forces, worked to overthrow the Taliban regime of Mullah Omar. On December 5, 2001, exiled Afghanistan political leaders representing various ethnic tribes gathered in Bonn, Germany, and named Karzai the chair of a 29-member governing committee and the leader of Afghanistan’s interim government. Karzai has traveled extensively around the world and has pleaded for donations in order to rebuild infrastructure and other facilities in his country. Karzai married Dr. Zeenat Quraishi in 1999. He has one sister and six brothers, including Ahmed Wali Karzai, who helps coordinate humanitarian relief operations in the province of Kandahar. See also al-Qaeda. Further reading: Evans, Martin. Afghanistan: A Short History of Its People and Politics. New York: Harper Publishers, 2002; Todd, Anne M. Hamid Karzai. London: Chelsea Publications, 2003. Mohammed Badrul Alam
Kennedy, John F.
Kaunda, Kenneth
(1924– ) first Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda, a Zambian nationalist, led the struggle for independence against the British and became the first president of independent Zambia in 1964. Kaunda was born in what was then Northern Rhodesia and, like many first-generation African nationalists, he was educated at Christian mission schools. He worked as a miner, as a teacher, and, for a short period of time, as an instructor in the army. Kaunda joined several African nationalist movements and in Lusaka became secretarygeneral of the African National Congress (ANC). He quit the ANC to form the Zambia African National Congress (ZANC); when the British banned ZANC in 1959, Kaunda was imprisoned. Upon his release Kaunda became president of the new United National Independence Party (UNIP) that replaced the banned ZANC; he supported demonstrations and civil disobedience against British control. Kaunda became president of newly independent Zambia in 1964 and held the presidency until 1991. During his tenure in power, Kaunda became increasingly authoritarian and, in a trajectory similar to other African rulers in the 1970s–1980s, declared Zambia a one-party state in 1972. As agricultural productivity faltered, Zambia’s economy became dependent on copper exports, and Kaunda was accused of corruption and responsibility for the economic problems. In face of mounting political opposition, Kaunda stepped down from power, and Frederick Chiluba replaced him as president in 1991. Chiluba maneuvered to prevent Kaunda from contesting further elections and, after being accused of involvement in an attempted coup d’état, Kaunda retired from politics in 1997. Further reading: Kaunda, Kenneth. Zambia Shall Be Free: An Autobiography by Kenneth D. Kaunda. New York: Praeger, 1963; Macpherson, Fergus. Kenneth Kauda of Zambia. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974. Janice J. Terry
Kennedy, John F.
(1917–1963) U.S. president John F. Kennedy was the 35th president of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in November 1963. Prior to that he had a prominent military career, served in the House of Representatives
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and then in the Senate from 1947 to 1960, and was the youngest person to be elected president. He is also the only Roman Catholic to be elected president. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born on May 29, 1917, in Brookline, Massachusetts, the second son of Joseph P. Kennedy and Rose (née Fitzgerald). He attended Dexter School, Riverdale Country School, Canterbury School, and later Choate School. Graduating in 1935, he went to London to study at the London School of Economics but fell ill and returned to the United States where he attended Princeton University briefly. He then went to Harvard College, spending the summer holidays in 1937, 1938, and 1939 in Europe. John Kennedy was in Germany in August 1939, returning to London by September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. In 1940 Kennedy completed his honors thesis, “Appeasement in Munich,” which was subsequently published as Why England Slept. In May and June 1941 Kennedy went to South America. He volunteered for the U.S. Army but was rejected because of his bad back. However, using contacts in the Office of Naval Intelligence, he was accepted for the navy in September, and when war broke out with Japan in December 1941, he served in the Pacific. On August 2, 1943, the boat which Kennedy was in, the PT-109, was rammed by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri while on a night-time patrol near New Georgia in the Solomon Islands. He towed a wounded man to safety and was personally involved in rescuing two others. Initially, John Kennedy had some thoughts about becoming a journalist. The death of his older brother, Joe, in 1944, however, propelled him into politics and in 1946 he ran for a seat in the House of Representatives as a Democrat for Massachusetts, winning with a large majority. In 1952 he defeated the incumbent Republican Henry Cabot Lodge for the U.S. Senate, and served in the Senate from 1953 to 1960. His book, Profiles in to Courage, was published in 1956, winning the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1957. Kennedy’s connections with Senator Joe McCarthy were to damage his standing in the liberal establishment, but he did support the Civil Rights Act of 1957. On September 12, 1953, John Kennedy married Jacqueline Lee Bouvier. They had four children: a daughter, stillborn in 1956; Caroline Bouvier Kennedy, born in 1957; John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr., born in 1960; and Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, born in 1963. In 1960 Kennedy ran for president. What was particularly noteworthy was the first television debate that Kennedy had with his Republican opponent,
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Minutes before the assassination: Texas governor John Connally and his wife (seated, front); Kennedy and the First Lady (back).
Richard Nixon. Kennedy defeated Nixon in a tightly fought race, with the Democrats gaining 303 electoral college seats against 219 for the Republicans. An independent, Harry Byrd, picked up the remaining 15 electoral college seats. On January 20, 1961, Kennedy was sworn in as the 35th president. The first controversy of his presidency concerned the government of Fidel Castro, which had come to power two years earlier. The Eisenhower administration had allowed anti-Castro Cubans to be secretly trained in the southern United States, mainly in Louisiana and Florida, and they had planned to invade Cuba. The plan had been drawn up before Kennedy came to power, and on April 17, 1961, Kennedy approved it. However, he cancelled the air support that was to have been provided by the U.S. Air Force. When the Cuban exiles landed at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba, they were quickly overwhelmed by the Communists. The next major crisis, the Cuban missile crisis, took place from October 14, 1962, when American U2 spy planes photographed a Soviet Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile site under construction in Cuba. He decided that an attack on the site might result in nuclear war, but that inaction would be seen as a sign of weakness. In the end, he resolved to order a military blockade of the island and eventually came to an agreement with the Soviet Union’s premier, Nikita Khrushchev, that the Soviet Union would remove the missiles, and the United States would promise never to invade Cuba, and withdraw some missiles from bases in Turkey.
Kennedy was interested in rapprochement with the Soviet Union, but he had to be perceived as “tough,” especially in Europe. On June 26, 1963, he visited West Berlin and addressed a large public crowd with the famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech. In August 1963 Kennedy was able to sign into law the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which prohibited atomic testing on the ground, in the atmosphere, and underwater, but did not prohibit testing underground. Another foreign policy problem that Kennedy faced was the increased fighting in Laos and Vietnam. In the former, the Kennedy administration backed a neutral government, and in the latter, the United States was heavily involved in supporting the anticommunist South Vietnamese government led by President Ngo Dinh Diem. By 1963 there were 15,000 U.S. military advisers in South Vietnam. Diem had ruled South Vietnam since late 1954 and was becoming increasingly authoritarian. Kennedy felt that it was Diem’s brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, who was a major problem and wanted Diem to get rid of Nhu. Diem realized that Nhu was his most powerful supporter and refused. This led the Kennedy administration to give the go-ahead for Buddhist South Vietnamese generals to overthrow Ngo Dinh Diem, who, along with Nhu, was murdered. The new regime was inherently unstable, causing the United States to commit more combat soldiers, escalating the war. The domestic program introduced by Kennedy was known as the New Frontier. He tried to legislate to prevent the continuance of racial discrimination. He also proposed tax reforms and promised federal funding for education, more medical care for the elderly, and government intervention to boost the economy of the nation. Most of these measures were to be introduced by Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. It was Johnson who, in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, introduced the measures that Kennedy had supported. John Kennedy is also well known for his commitment to the space program. With the Soviet Union managing to win all the first stages of the space race, Kennedy pushed for greater effort from the American people. The moon landing took place on July 20, 1969, during Nixon’s presidency. As John Kennedy had only narrowly won the 1960 presidential election, he began his campaign for reelection early. This involved trying to win support from the southern states. He went to Texas in November 1963, where, on November 22, in Dallas, at 12:30 p.m., he was assassinated. A loner, Lee Harvey Oswald, was arrested about 80 minutes later and charged with murdering a Texas policeman. He was then also charged
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with murdering John F. Kennedy. Before Oswald could be brought to trial, two days later, on November 24, he was shot dead by nightclub owner Jack Ruby. There has been much written about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. On November 29, five days after the shooting of Oswald, Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, created the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known as the Warren Commission because it was chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren. It concluded that Kennedy was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone, a view later endorsed by the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations reporting in 1979. Most people now view the Warren Commission report with disdain for the evidence that it missed. John F. Kennedy was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia. The bodies of two of his children, his first daughter, and Patrick, his youngest son who died on August 9, 1963, were brought to Arlington and buried with him. Further Reading: Dallek, Robert. An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 2003; Freedman, Lawrence. Kennedy’s Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000; Giglio, James N. The Presidency of John F. Kennedy. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1991; Harper, Paul, and Krieg, Joann P., eds. John F. Kennedy, the Promise Revisited. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988; Hersh, Seymour M. The Dark Side of Camelot. Boston: Little, Brown, 1997. Justin Corfield
Kenya Present-day Kenya is a mix of colonial struggle and capitalist vigor. The road to Kenyan independence began in earnest in October 1952. Kenya, under a state of emergency that would last seven years, began its march toward decolonization. The Mau Mau rebellion against British colonial rule prompted the successful request for a state of emergency. Britain rallied its own troops, in addition to African troops, to suppress the rebellion. With newfound intelligence data gathered during the integration of General China, Britain embarked on Operation Anvil on April 24, 1954, in hopes of ending a successful rebellion against them. Operation Anvil severely restricted the already limited freedoms of the citizens of Nairobi. Mau Mau supporters left in the capital were moved from the
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city to detention camps. Although the Mau Mau rebellion was not officially over until 1959, the capture of Dedan Kimathi on October 21, 1956, decreased the optimism of those fighting for the end of colonial rule. The end of the Mau Mau rebellion’s main military offensive in 1956 opened the door for voluntary British withdrawal. The first direct elections for Africans to the Legislative Council were in 1957. With moderates making up the majority of the Legislative Assembly, the British government had hoped that power could be passed to those who wished to see a minimal British presence in Kenya. However, the Kenya African National Union (KANU) and extremist Jomo Kenyatta formed the government shortly before Kenya became officially independent on December 12, 1963. Single-party leadership continued after Kenyatta’s death in 1978 with Daniel arap Moi. President arap Moi survived an abortive military coup attempt on August 1, 1982, masterminded by air force serviceman Senior Private Hezekiah Ochuka. Ochuka attempted to take the capital, but the coup was suppressed by loyalist forces led by the army, the general service unit, and later the regular police. Intimidated by the strength of the air force, arap Moi disbanded the Kenyan Air Force. Moi was unsuccessful in nurturing Kenya’s postcolonial economy. Sensing radical changes to Kenya’s governmental institutions, Moi enacted constitutional reform during the 1988 elections. Elections were opened to the mlolongo system, by which voters lined up behind their selected candidate. Over the course of the next years several clauses from the constitution were changed in order to reestablish Kenya’s failing political and economic systems. The first democratic elections were held in 1992. Moi was reelected and again in 1997. In the 2002 elections, Moi was constitutionally barred from running, and Mwai Kibaki was elected for the National Rainbow Coalition. With the absence of civil war in Kenya the country remained relatively stable, but it continued to be a single-party state until the 2002 elections. President Kibaki instituted long-needed reforms, but continued Kenya’s tradition of corruption at the highest levels. A draft constitution put forth in November 2005 was defeated by the Kenyan electorate when it was discovered it would only decrease transparency in government. In response, Kibaki dismissed his entire cabinet and appointed new ministers, many of whom belonged to political parties with which he was aligned. Natural disaster plagued Kenya in the late 1990s, compounding the already poor economic situation. Severe flooding destroyed roads, bridges, and crops; epidemics of
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malaria and cholera overran the health care system; and ethnic clashes erupted. Desperate to win back International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank funding to assist the millions in need, President Moi appointed his high-profile critic and political opponent, Richard Leakey, as head of the civil service in 1999. A third generation white Kenyan, Leakey was fired by Moi two years later for apparently engaging in corruption. This prompted the ruling party to put forth an anticorruption law in August 2001, whose failure to pass ended Kenya’s chances for renewed international aid. Corruption continued under President Kabaki. His anticorruption minister, John Githongo, resigned in February 2005 over frustrations that he was prevented from investigating scandals. In early 2006 investigations showed that the government was linked to two corruption scandals. Economic devastation brought on by severe droughts compounded the systemic corruption. Elections in December 2007 sparked weeks of violence, resulting in more than 1,000 deaths. Former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan brokened a deal to form a new government, thus halting the possible threat of civil war. Further reading: Gertzel, Cherry J. The Politics of Independent Kenya, 1963–8. Chicago: Northwestern University, 1970; Hunt, Diana. The Impending Crisis in Kenya: The Case of Land Reform. New York: Gower, 1984; Oucho, John O. Undercurrents of Ethnic Conflict in Kenya. New York: Brill Academic Publishers, 2002. Rian Wall
Kenyatta, Jomo
(1889–1978) Kenyan president Jomo Kenyatta was born in Kenya and as a infant was named Kamau wa Ngengi; he took the name Jomo in 1938. Kenyatta was keenly interested in local traditions and social customs, particularly those of the Kikuyu. His study, Facing Mount Kenya (1938), remains one of the definitive works on the Kikuyu. As a youngster Kenyatta helped his grandfather, a traditional healer, but after being educated at a mission school he converted to Christianity. As a young man, Kenyatta worked for an Indian Asian merchant and in a European business firm. In the 1920s Kenyatta became the leader of the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA), which represented the Kikuyu in their land cases against the British, who had
confiscated large tracts of Kikuyu farmland that was then taken by white, usually British, settlers. Kenyatta represented the Kikuyu on negotiating missions to England and visited the Soviet Union in 1930. Upon his return to England as a teacher, Kenyatta was falsely accused of communist ties. Kenyatta participated in the fifth Pan Africa Congress, which met in Manchester, England, in 1945. Upon returning to Kenya after World War II, he assumed leadership of the Kenyan nationalist movement. In 1952 he was arrested and accused of managing the Kenya nationalist armed movement, known in the West as the Mau Mau; he served nine years in prison or under virtual house arrest. The Mau Mau was accused of terrorist acts against the white, mostly British settlers. Although the Mau Mau revolt was responsible for violence and the murder of some settlers, the Western media exaggerated the levels of violence. Kenyatta became president of the Kenya African National Union (KANU) in 1961 and led a delegation to London to negotiate full independence, or Uhuru. In 1964, Kenyatta became the president of the independent Kenyan, republic. Known as Baba wa Taifa, father of the nation, Kenyatta maintained economic stability in Kenya, but his opponents also charged him with cronyism and corruption. He died while still in power in 1978 and was succeeded by Daniel arap Moi, who faced increased opposition to his mounting dictatorial powers. See also Kenya. Further reading: Clough, Marshall S. Mau Mau Memoirs: History, Memory, and Politics. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1997; Gatheru, R. Mugo. Kenya: From Colonization to Independence, 1888–1970. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005; Kenyatta, Jomo. Facing Mount Kenya. New York: Vintage Books, 1965. Janice J. Terry
Khan, Liaquat Ali
(1896–1951) Pakistani leader Born on October 1, 1896, in the United Provinces of pre-partition India, Liaquat became the first prime minister of Pakistan and a founding father when it became independent on August 14, 1947. He graduated from Aligarh College, and he became interested in the Indian nationalist movement. Afterward, he traveled to Britain to continue his education, obtaining a degree in law
Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah
from Oxford University in 1921, and was called to the bar in 1922. Liaquat returned to India in 1923. He began to identify with the Muslim cause. He joined the Muslim League, which sought to represent Muslims across the subcontinent. In 1926 Liaquat won his first election as a member in the United Provinces Legislative Assembly, although as an independent. In 1940 he was elected to the Central Legislative Assembly, where he established a reputation as a successful politician of principle, integrity, and eloquence. Although he sought to promote the interests of Muslim Indians, he also worked to quell communal discord. In 1936 he was elected honorary secretary of the Muslim League, and he held the office until independence in 1947. He became increasingly influential within the Muslim League, as illustrated by his appointment as deputy leader of the Muslim League Parliamentary Party in 1940, where he forged a close working relationship as the lieutenant of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League and later the father of Pakistan. After partition, Liaquat accepted the prime ministership and also served as minister of defense under Jinnah, governor-general of Pakistan. The nation was not only divided into East (now Bangladesh) and West Pakistan, it was also plagued by a refugee crisis as migrating Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs fled across the subcontinent before and immediately after the partition. With Jinnah’s death in 1948, Liaquat became the dominant leader in Pakistan. Although Pakistan’s political establishments were strongly pro-Western, Islam began to broaden its influence. Pakistan’s disputes with India over trade and the division of Kashmir dominated foreign policy, and relations between the two nations remained tense. Liaquat was assassinated in October 1951. His death ushered in a chaotic period, and democracy soon floundered, culminating in the military seizure power in a coup in 1958. See also Indo-Pakistani Wars (Kashmir). Further reading: Long, Roger D., ed. “Dear Mr. Jinnah”: Selected Correspondence and Speeches of Liaquat Ali Khan, 1937–1947. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2004; Reza, Muhammad. Liaquat Ali Khan: His Life and Work. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004; Talbot, Ian. Pakistan: A Modern History. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998; Tan, T. Y., and G. Kudaisya. The Aftermath of Partition in South Asia. London: Routledge, 2000. Ryan Touhey
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Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah
(c. 1900–1989) Iranian religious and political leader Ruhollah Khomeini, an Iranian religious leader known by the Islamic title of ayatollah, was the driving force behind the movement that overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1979; he then became Iran’s highest political and religious authority for the next 10 years. Although Khomeini was born into a poor family, he was the grandson and son of mullahs (Shi’i religious leaders). When he was five months old, his father was killed in a dispute. The young Khomeini was then raised by his mother, later his aunt, and finally his older brother Murtaza. Khomeini was educated in various Islamic schools and received the sort of instruction expected of a mullah’s son. Khomeini was an attentive, intelligent, hardworking, and serious student. In about 1922 he settled in the city of Qom, and around 1930 he assumed the surname of Khomeini from his birthplace, Khomein (or Khomeyn). As a respected Shi’i scholar and teacher, Khomeini authored many works on Islamic philosophy, law, and ethics. It was his outspoken opposition to Iran’s ruler, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, plus Khomeini’s resolute advocacy of Islamic purity, that garnered him support in Iran. In the 1950s Khomeini received the religious title of ayatollah by popular acclaim; by the early 1960s he had received the title of grand ayatollah, which made him one of the supreme religious leaders of the Shi’i community in Iran. In 1962–63 Khomeini publicly opposed the shah’s land-reform program; he also spoke out against the Western-style emancipation of women in Iran. These criticisms led to Khomeini’s arrest, which quickly sparked antigovernment riots. After a year’s imprisonment Khomeini was forced into exile in November 1964; he eventually settled in the Shi’i holy city of Najaf, Iraq, from which he continued to call for the shah’s removal from power. From the mid-1970s Khomeini’s stature inside Iran grew. When Khomeini’s continued denunciations of the shah caused political difficulties in Iraq, Iraq’s ruler Saddam Hussein expelled Khomeini from the country in October 1978. Khomeini and his second wife then settled in Neauphle-le-Château, a suburb of Paris. From there the Ayatollah Khomeini directed the movement to unseat the shah. Khomeini’s call for a general strike in October 1978 led to a crippling strike in the Iranian oil fields in November. These and other strikes resulted in massive demonstrations, riots, and civil unrest, which in turn forced the departure of the shah from the country on January 16, 1979. Khomeini arrived in the Iranian capital of Tehran on February 1 and was popularly acclaimed as
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the religious leader of Iran’s revolution. The Ayatollah Khomeini appointed a government on February 5 and then moved to live in the holy city of Qom. In December 1979 a new constitution was adopted, which created an Islamic republic in Iran. Khomeini was named Iran’s political and religious leader (fagih) for life. Although the Ayatollah Khomeini held no official government office, he proved implacable in his determination to transform Iran into a theocratically ruled Islamic state. He directed the revival of traditional, fundamentalist Islamic values, customs, laws, and legal procedures, explaining how they were to affect all public and private activities in Iran. Khomeini also acted as arbiter among the various feuding secular and religious factions vying for power in the new revolutionary state. Still, Khomeini made final decisions on important matters requiring his personal authority. The main theme of Khomeini’s foreign policy was the total abandonment of the shah’s pro-Western position and the adoption of an attitude of hostility to both the United States and the Soviet Union. At the same time, Khomeini’s Iran tried to export its version of Islamic fundamentalism to neighboring Muslim countries. After Iranian militants seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979, Khomeini sanctioned their holding of U.S. diplomatic personnel as hostages for more than a year, souring diplomatic relations with the United States for many years. Khomeini also refused to permit an early peaceful solution to the Iran-Iraq War, which had begun in 1980, by insisting that it be prolonged in hopes of overthrowing Iraq’s president, Saddam Hussein. Khomeini finally approved a cease-fire in 1988 that effectively ended the conflict. Iran’s path of economic development almost came to nothing under Khomeini’s rule, and his pursuit of victory in the Iran-Iraq War ultimately proved pointless and extremely costly to Iran. Nevertheless Khomeini was able to retain, by sheer force of personality, his hold over Iran’s Shi’i masses, and until his death in 1989 he remained the supreme political and religious arbiter in the country. See also Iran hostage crisis; Iranian revolution. Further reading: Abrahamian, Ervand. Khomeinism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993; Durschmied, Erik. The Blood of Revolution. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2002; Gordon, Matthew. Ayatollah Khomeini. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987. Keith Bukovich
Khrushchev, Nikita (1894–1971) Soviet leader
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was first secretary of the Communist Party and de facto leader of the Soviet Union between 1953 and 1964; he concurrently served as premier from 1958 to 1964. Colorful and highly controversial, Khrushchev was a reformer whose shrewd intellect was frequently overshadowed by his impulsive personality. He abolished the most ruthless aspects of the political system and tried with limited success to catch up with and overtake the U.S. economy. In foreign affairs he forcefully maintained the unity of the Eastern bloc and veered between “peaceful coexistence” and several dangerous confrontations with the United States. He was, without question, one of the most important figures of the cold war. Khrushchev was born in April 1894 in Kalinovka, Russia, near the border with Ukraine. His parents were illiterate peasants, and young Nikita was more familiar with hard labor than formal education. The family relocated to Ukraine in 1908, where he worked various factory jobs and got involved in the organized labor movement. In 1917 he joined the revolutionary Bolsheviks and he later fought for the Red Army. After the war he obtained some Marxist training at a technical college and was assigned a political post in the Ukraine. Over the next 20 years Khrushchev would rise rapidly through the ranks of the Communist Party, and in 1939 he became a full member of the Politburo. His success was largely due to his loyalty to Stalin. During World War II he helped organize the defense of the Ukraine and the relocation of heavy industry into the Russian interior, and he was at Stalingrad when the Red Army turned the tide of the war against Germany. After the war Khrushchev remained an influential member of the Politburo, and when Stalin died in March 1953, he battled with Georgy Malenkov, Lavrenty Beria, and Nikolai Bulganin for the leadership. Malenkov was made premier and initially seemed to be the true successor, but as first secretary of the Communist Party, Khrushchev possessed the real power. By early 1955 he had emerged as the clear leader of the Soviet Union. Once in firm control, Khrushchev embarked on ambitious economic reforms. Khrushchev also continued the policy of spending heavily on the military. Under his leadership, the Soviet Union kept pace in the nuclear arms race with the United States and developed a space program that had significant successes.
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a standoff resulted that brought the world alarmingly close to nuclear war. In the end the Cuban missile crisis was resolved through diplomatic back channels, with the Soviets removing the missiles in exchange for a U.S. pledge not to invade Cuba and the removal of U.S. missiles from Turkey. Both sides gained something, but Khrushchev was widely perceived to have backed down in the face of U.S. resolve. By this time he had already made too many enemies within the Soviet Union. Finally, in late 1964, Khrushchev was removed from power by a conservative faction led by Leonid Brezhnev. His life was spared, perhaps a testament to the success of his political reforms, but Khrushchev spent the rest of his life under house arrest. He died in Moscow in September 1971. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, shown here at the United Nations, initiated radical reforms after the death of Joseph Stalin.
The launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957 and the first manned space flight in 1961 were great technical triumphs for the Soviet Union. Khrushchev also decided, in a very risky move, to expose the horrors of the Stalinist era and to promote political reforms. In February 1956 he gave a speech to the 20th Party Congress that denounced Stalin’s “cult of personality,” documented various crimes of the old regime, and introduced the policy of “de-Stalinization.” The speech sparked hopes that Khrushchev would tolerate autonomy and perhaps even democracy within the Eastern bloc. These hopes proved illusory when a popular 1956 uprising in Hungary was suppressed by a brutal military intervention authorized by Khrushchev. This action shocked the West, which had welcomed the assurances of Khrushchev that the Soviet Union desired “peaceful coexistence” between capitalism and communism. Khrushchev seemed unable to resist the temptation to taunt the West periodically, and he had several alarming showdowns with the United States. He tried fruitlessly to force the United States and its allies out of Berlin between 1958 and 1961, eventually building the infamous Berlin Wall. He also humiliated Eisenhower in 1960 by revealing the capture of a U.S. U-2 spy plane and its pilot. Riskiest of all, in 1962 Khrushchev secretly placed nuclear missiles in communist Cuba. The purpose of this gamble was to protect Cuba from U.S. attack and to provide the Soviet Union with instant strategic parity. When U.S. spy planes detected the missiles, however,
Further reading: Khrushchev, Nikita. Khrushchev Remembers. New York: Bantam Books, 1971; ———. Nikita Khrushchev and the Creation of a Superpower. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000; Taubman, William. Khrushchev: The Man and His Era. New York: Norton, 2003. Chris Pennington
Kim Il Sung (1912–1994)/ Kim Jong Il (1942– ) Korean political leaders Together, father and son Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il form a dynasty that has ruled the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or Communist North Korea, since its creation in 1948. Because of the personality cult established by Kim Il Sung and because Korea remains a tightly closed society, details about the lives of the two men remain scarce. The information that is disseminated officially is so flattering that it is highly suspect. For example, one biography of Kim Il Sung reports that he fought more than 100,000 times against the Japanese in the seven years between 1932 and 1945 and was always victorious. Kim Il Sung (originally Kim Sung Chu) was born in 1912 in a northeastern province of Korea. His father was a schoolteacher who took his family to Chinese Manchuria in 1925 to escape Japan’s harsh colonization of their homeland. For the next 14 years, Kim lived in Manchuria, where he joined the Communist Party in 1931. In 1939 Kim went to the Soviet Union, where he received further military training and was part of the Soviet military force that invaded and occupied Pyongyang in 1945.
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According to the terms of the Yalta agreement, the United States and the Soviet Union divided Korea into North and South. Kim stayed in the north with the Soviets, who helped him prevail over other factions and become premier of the new Democratic People’s Republic in 1948. Under Soviet and Chinese sponsorship Kim instigated the Korean War, which lasted until 1953. A great admirer of Stalin, Kim patterned his rule after the Soviet leader. During the years following the Korean War, Kim solidified his power, purged his enemies, drove out foreign influences, and established himself as almost a god. He also managed, through rigorous control of the press, to exalt his family, raising many of them to the status of national heroes. He decreed that no newspaper could be published without his picture on the front page and without all the stories approved by government censors. His pictures and statues were also in every public building in the nation. These and other actions were undertaken as part of Kim’s self-proclaimed doctrine of Juchie, which encompassed the total economic, social, and political philosophy of the country. North Korean citizens born after the Korean War had little or no knowledge of the outside world, since anything foreign was prohibited. His birthday became a national holiday. Since 1976, the Loyalty Festival Period has included February 16 (Kim Jong Il’s birthday) and April 15 (Kim Il Sung’s birthday). According to some reports, Korea went to extraordinary lengths to prolong Kim Il Sung’s life. Purportedly a clinic staffed with 2,000 specialists was constructed solely for the purpose of caring for Kim and his son. Staff at the clinic experimented with diets and drugs on two teams of men who were similar to the leaders in age and body makeup. These efforts to extend his life all failed and the elder Kim died in 1994. Kim Jong Il, the eldest son of Kim Il Sung, became his country’s next dictator. He was born in 1941 while his father was training in the Soviet Union. The Soviets had established a school for the children of Korea’s guerrilla fighters, the Mangyongdae Revolutionary School, where Jong Il received his early education. After two years of training at the Air Academy in East Germany, the young Kim returned to Korea and attended Kim Il Sung University. Kim Jong Il’s portraits began to appear with his father’s, and he was referred to by titles such as “the sun of the communist future.” He made official visits to China and the Soviet Union in the 1980s, further indicating that he would follow his father as ruler. But he was not immediately named as his father’s successor.
The title of the country’s president was reserved for his father by a constitutional amendment. Little information is available about the personal life of Kim Jong Il. Some sources report that his halfbrother is being groomed as his successor while other reports indicate that his sons are embroiled in a struggle to become heir. Further reading: French, Paul. North Korea: The Paranoid Peninsula, A Modern History. London: Zed Books, 2005; Martin, Bradley K. Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2004. Jean Shepherd Hamm
King, Martin Luther, Jr.
(1929–1968) U.S. civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., was a civil rights leader whose campaigns for African-American racial equality made him an American icon. King was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 15, 1929, the son of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr., and Alberta Williams King. He was part of a ministerial dynasty at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, which was begun by his grandfather, who served the church from 1914 to 1931. King preached there from 1960 until his death. King’s initial education was in the segregated Atlanta school system. He left high school at age 15 after gaining early acceptance at Atlanta’s prestigious Morehouse College. From Morehouse he went north to attend Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, becoming president of his senior class, and gaining his B.D. degree in 1951. He then accepted a fellowship that allowed him to pursue a doctorate at Boston University, finishing his preliminary studies in 1953 and receiving his degree in 1955. It was during this time that he met and married Coretta Scott on June 18, 1953. Following Dr. King’s death Coretta King emerged as a promoter of civil rights and social justice in her own right. She served as leader of the King Foundation until her death in 2006. In 1953 King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, at age 26 and began to condemn Jim Crow segregation in the course of promoting civil rights reform for the AfricanAmerican citizens of Alabama. In 1955 he joined the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The boycott lasted for more than a year and King faced retribution and death threats, including the bombing of his home. As with many other
Martin Luther King, Jr., was the most eloquent leader of the American civil rights movement in the 1960s.
civil rights developments, the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately proved the driving force that finally ended segregation on intrastate buses in 1956. In 1957 King took on the leadership of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which became the springboard for his authority and that of the emerging Civil Rights movement. The movement began in black communities and churches but soon drew members from the broader population outside the south. King shaped the SCLC philosophy toward nonviolent protest and pressure, drawing upon Christian teachings, but also inspired by the successful protests of Mohandas K. Gandhi. King was also on the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Through these leadership positions and through growing televised media attention, King became a national figure and a major force in U.S. politics. The movement often faced a violent response to its activi-
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ties, particularly as its agenda expanded to include a full range of civil rights issues. The speed of change proved dramatic and unstoppable and received national attention through events such as the 1963 March on Washington, which was inspired by and coordinated with other civil rights leaders but made famous by King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. It has been argued that the focus of this demonstration became less angry and more embracing because of pressure put on King by President John F. Kennedy, who believed the wrong approach could damage support for civil rights legislation. King’s ascendance to national prominence was revealed when he became Time magazine’s Man of the Year for 1963. These protests helped in the passing, during the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson, of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Martin Luther King, Jr., received recognition for his gigantic influence when he was made a Nobel laureate in 1964, being awarded the Peace Prize in recognition of his many efforts. It was in the mid-1960s that King tried to take the civil rights movement to the north, beginning in Chicago in 1966. King and Ralph Abernathy made an effort to confront the poor’s living conditions by moving to the slums. Here he faced violence and discrimination as well as Mayor Richard J. Daley’s Chicago political administration, which undercut reform activities whenever possible. Eventually King and Abernathy returned to the South, but left a then-young follower, Jesse Jackson, in Chicago to carry on their work. From this base Jackson later built his own organization. King started to reevaluate his positions on many areas and issues, including social and economic reform as well as the Vietnam War. His rhetoric and speeches took on new tones that seemed to challenge not only segregation, racial justice, and civil rights but also issues potentially far more controversial to the mainstream. His turn to issues of poverty and its eradication led to his and SCLC’s involvement in the “Poor People’s Campaign” in 1968, which was to culminate in another major march on Washington demanding that the government address the needs of the poorest communities and members of U.S. society. In April 1968 his campaign took him to Memphis, Tennessee, where he offered his support to the Memphis Sanitation Workers’ strike for better wages and conditions. King saw the solution to many of these problems in government-driven job programs to reduce and reverse poverty in the nation in the form of a poor peoples’ bill of rights. While staying at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on April 4, 1968, in preparation for a local
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march in support of the strikers, King appeared on the balcony at 6:01 p.m. and was assassinated by rifle shot. He was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. King’s death was met with shock and dismay. President Johnson declared a day of national mourning, and the vice president, Hubert Humphrey, attended the funeral along with a crowd estimated at 300,000. A national and international manhunt was launched for the killer, and two months later in London, England, James Earl Ray was apprehended on a passport violation and extradited to Tennessee, where he was charged with King’s murder and confessed on March 10, 1969. Ray received a 99-year sentence and spent the rest of his life denying his guilt and requesting a trial. He argued that King had been killed by others and that he was only a fall guy in the midst of a larger conspiracy. Ray and several other inmates escaped from Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in Petros, Tennessee, on June 1977, not long after Ray testified to the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Controversy has surrounded the Ray conviction and there are many who believe that sinister forces manipulated and orchestrated the assassination plot. Issues have been raised concerning fingerprint evidence and ballistic tests on the rifle used in the crime. In 1997 Ray was visited in prison by King’s son Dexter, who supported Ray’s demand for a trial. In 1999 the King family instigated a wrongful death civil action against Loyd Jowers, a local Memphis restaurant owner who claimed a role in the assassination. A local jury found that Jowers, even though he had failed a lie detector test in regard to his claim, was guilty and that other government agencies were involved in the assassination. These claims were investigated in detail by the Department of Justice in 2000 and no evidence in support of the allegations was found. The assumptions concerning a high-level conspiracy were enhanced because of King’s conflicts with J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. Initially they investigated communist associates of King and the organization, and maintained wiretaps at various times, including intruding on King’s privacy and threatening him with exposure of his extramarital affairs. These tapes were placed in the National Archives and will be sealed until 2027. Besides these attacks on the King legacy and honor, there were concerns expressed in the 1980s over plagiarism. This did lead to a formal inquiry in regards to his doctoral dissertation by Boston University, which concluded that almost a third of his work was taken from another student. Yet the university decided not to revoke his degree. It was also argued that many of his
other writings and speeches received the benefit of literary assistance in the form of ghostwriters. Nevertheless even in the face of these questions as to his character, Martin Luther King, Jr., remains a major force in U.S. history whose name is one of the most easily recognized in the land. His boyhood home in Atlanta became a national historic site in 1980 and in November 1983 President Ronald Reagan endorsed a bill creating a Martin Luther King National Holiday, which occurs on the third Monday in January. In addition his name was added to many streets and other public buildings throughout the United States and a King National Memorial in Washington, D.C., began with the purchase of land near the National Mall in 1999. Final design approval came in 2005. See also Malcolm X. Further reading: Branch, Taylor. At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965–1968. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006; Garrow, David J. Y. Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. New York: HarperCollins, 2004; King, Corretta. Martin Luther King Jr. The Words of Martin Luther King. New York: Newmarket, 2001; King, Martin Luther, Jr. The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr. Clayborne Carson, ed. New York: Warner, 1998; Kirk, John A. Martin Luther King, Jr. London: Longman, 2005. Theodore W. Eversole
Koizumi, Junichiro
(1942– ) Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi was born to a political family in Kanagawa Prefecture and educated at Keio University and University College London. He began his political career as a secretary to Takeo Fukuda, who later became prime minister. Koizumi was elected to the House of Representatives (lower house of the Diet) in 1970 as a member of the Liberal Democratic Party. He became minister of posts and telecommunications in 1992 and served three terms as minister of health and welfare, the first beginning in 1996. Koizumi ran unsuccessfully for the presidency of the Liberal Democratic Party in 1995 and 1999 before he was successful in 2001. He became prime minister of Japan on August 26, 2001, and was reelected in 2003 and 2005; he stepped down in 2006. Koizumi was very popular when first elected. Although his popularity fluctuated over his years in office, he was the longest-serving Japanese prime
Korea, Democratic People’s Republic of
minister in two decades. His greatest efforts were directed at revitalizing the Japanese economy. To this end he proposed privatizing the Japan Post, a public corporation that offers banking and life insurance as well as postal and package delivery services. This proposed privatization was a controversial issue in Japan for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that it employed one-third of all Japanese government employees, who feared the elimination of their jobs. Koizumi also decreased traditional subsidies for infrastructure and industrial development in rural areas, part of an attempt to shift the base of support for the Liberal Democratic Party from rural areas to a more urban core. Koizumi made several visits to the Yasakuni Shrine in Tokyo, which honors the Japanese war dead, beginning in 2001. Because 14 Class-A war criminals are honored at the shrine, these visits drew international criticism, especialy from China and South Korea, Japan’s victims. Koizumi’s decision to send members of the Japan Self-Defence Force to Iraq in support of U.S. operations in 2003 was also controversial, even though the Japanese troops were theoretically only involved in humanitarian activities. Koizumi’s personal style was quite different from that projected by most Japanese politicians: he called himself a kakumei no hito, or revolutionary, although some of his critics considered him more of a henjin, an eccentric. His personal appearance, complete with relatively long and unkempt hair and fashionable suits, and his much-publicized interest in rock music, suggested cultivation of this image. Further reading: Bowen, Roger. Japan’s Dysfunctional Democracy: The Liberal Democratic Party and Structural Corruption. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2003; Cargill, Thomas F., and Naoyuki Yoshino. Postal Savings and Fiscal Investment in Japan: The PSS and the FILP. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003; Multan, Aurelia George. Japan’s Failed Revolution: Koizumi and the Politics of Economic Reform. Canberra: Asia Pacific Press, 2002; Prime Minister of Japan and His Cabinet. http://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/index-e.html (cited April 2006). Sarah Boslaugh
Korea, Democratic People’s Republic of With an area of 120,410 square kilometers, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), or North
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Korea, occupies slightly more than half of the northern part of the Korean Peninsula in northeast Asia. North Korea shares common borders with the Republic of Korea to the south, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to the north, and Russia to the northeast. A four-kilometer-wide demilitarized zone, which runs 238 kilometers across land and another three kilometers into the sea, marks the boundary between the two Koreas near the 38th parallel. The estimated population of DPRK in 2004 was 22,697,553. Pyongyang is the national capital. North Korea remained one of the most isolated states in the contemporary world. North Korea is a communist state. Its leader, Kim Jong Il succeeded to the position of supreme leadership in 1994 after the death of his father, Kim Il Sung, although this was not formalized until four years later. Both father and son dominated the North Korean government since its inception. A newly amended constitution in 1998 conferred on the deceased Kim the title of president for life and abolished the office of the president. Kim Jong Il heads the National Defense Commission (NDC), which functions as the chief administrative authority in the country. He is also supreme commander of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) and general secretary of the Korean Workers’ Party (KWP). The separate state of North Korea was created as a result of the military situation at the end of World War II. When Japan surrendered in August 1945, the northern part of the peninsula was occupied by Soviet forces, while the southern half came under U.S. military authority. The peninsula was consequently divided into two military occupation zones at the 38th parallel. The Soviet occupation authority turned to Kim Il Sung, who had fought the Japanese in Manchuria, to provide leadership in its zone. In September 1948 Kim launched the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, with himself as the premier. In early 1950 Kim Il Sung lobbied his communist allies in the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to support a North Korean effort to reunite the two Koreas. On June 23, 1950, the commanders of seven combat divisions of the North Korean People’s Army amassed near the border and received orders to initiate the “war of liberation.” Crossing the 38th parallel, North Korean forces quickly overwhelmed South Korean forces before they themselves were stopped and then pushed back across the border by a United Nations (UN) force led by the United States. In November PRC sent “volunteers” to fight alongside the North Koreans when UN forces neared the Yalu River, North Korea’s border with China. An
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armistice was signed in 1953, establishing a demilitarized zone roughly at the 38th parallel. The wartime situation gave Kim Il Sung the opportunity to consolidate his position and establish himself as the absolute power in North Korea. In a series of show trials and purges, potential rivals were eliminated. In 1956 members of rival factions were purged from the KWP. In fact, some were made to shoulder the blame for the failure of the unification effort. Two years later the KWP announced that it had ended intra-party dissent. Kim Il Sung was now the undisputed leader, controlling virtually all aspects of North Korean society. A personality cult soon emerged around the person of Kim Il Sung, who was elevated to the status of “Great Leader,” and his past as a guerrilla fighter against the Japanese, his defiance of the United States, and his exploits in building the nation were mythologized in song and poetry. Institutions such as universities and museums bear his name, and important places in his life are national shrines. A similar personality cult developed around his son and successor, Kim Jong Il, with mythical events written into his biography. Revered as “Dear Leader,” the younger Kim is said to be imbued with extraordinary intellectual and artistic abilities. North Korea adopted as its guiding ideology juch’e, or self-reliance. Occasionally dubbed Kim Il-Sungism, the concept, which emerged in the mid-1950s, is an amalgamation of Marxist-Leninist doctrines with Maoism, Confucianism, and Korean traditions. Juch’e in operational terms involves the creation of a self-sustaining national economy and a strong military that can provide self-defense. After the Korean War, Kim Il Sung focused on economic development. With a centrally planned command economy, North Korea at first appeared to be making great strides. It recovered quickly from the devastation of the Korean War. In the spirit of juch’e, economic planners focused on industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture. Equally important for North Korean economic survival was Soviet economic assistance, although limited, and the preferential treatment that North Korean goods received in the Soviet Union, PRC, and the East European satellites through the late 1970s–80s. The changing geopolitical situation reduced such outside assistance to almost nothing and exposed the vulnerabilities in the North Korean economy. The consequences of a decades-old inefficient economic system could no longer be kept hidden. Energy and food shortages plagued North Korea, a country with little arable land and no oil reserves. Cycles of natural disasters exacerbated the situation. From the late
1990s onward North Korea had to rely on food aid from other countries, including South Korea, to stave off widespread famine. The relationship between the two Koreas continued a seesaw trend in the Kim Jong Il era. From the mid1990s onward there were intermittent talks between the two governments. In 1998 when South Korean president Kim Dae Jung initiated his Sunshine Policy, which held out hope for reconciliation between the two Koreas, he found a receptive audience in the north partly because North Korea saw this as a means of securing the necessary economic assistance. In 2002 the North Korean government also began to abandon some features of its tightly controlled command economy. In addition, it adopted some market features, such as removing price and wage controls. The government also began to court foreign investment and foreign trade, including from the Republic of Korea. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, North Korea once again garnered attention because of its nuclear weapons program, weapons sales to Iran, and its withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Six-party talks involving North Korea, South Korea, Japan, the PRC, Russia, and the United States did not yield definitive results. In 2005, North Korea tested a missile over the Sea of Japan. This approach increased the level of tension and raised the specter of a military confrontation in the Northeast Asia region. In October 2007, North Korea agreed to disable its nuclear facilities by late 2008 in exchange for economic aid. Further reading: Cummings, Bruce. Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History. New York: Norton, 1997; French, Paul. North Korea: The Paranoid Peninsula—A Modern History. London: Zed Books, 2005; Kim, Chun-Kil. The History of Korea. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005; Oberdorfer, Don. The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History. New York: Basic Books, 1999; Stueck, William. The Korean War: An International History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. Soo Chun Lu
Korea, Republic of With an area of 98,480 square kilometers, the Republic of Korea (ROK), or South Korea, occupies slightly less than half of the Korean Peninsula. It is bordered to the north by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea), to the south by the East
China Sea, to the east by the Sea of Japan, and to the west by the Yellow Sea. A four-kilometer-wide demilitarized zone, which runs 238 kilometers across land and another three kilometers over the sea, marks the boundary between the two Koreas. The estimated population of ROK in 2005 was 48,422,644. Seoul, located near the border with North Korea, is the capital city. South Korea has a republican government based on a presidential model. A popularly elected president, who is the head of state, appoints a prime minister as well as other members of the cabinet. A unicameral National Assembly functions as the legislative branch, and the Supreme Court and Constitutional Court make up the judicial branch. In August 1945 Allied forces led by the United States landed on the Korean Peninsula in the south while Soviet forces moved down from the north, eventually liberating Korea from Japanese colonial rule. The 38th parallel became the boundary dividing the occupation forces from 1945 to 1948. What began as the separation of two administrative units dictated by the Yalta agreement between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in 1945 eventually led to the creation of two separate states dictated by the political and ideological divisions of the cold war. Domestic developments further complicated the matter. Throughout the war years, various Korean nationalist factions operating at home and in exile jostled to position themselves as the representatives of an independent Korea. In the immediate postwar era, the United States eventually turned to Syngman Rhee, an exiled popular anticommunist nationalist to provide leadership in the south. In 1947 the newly formed United Nations (un) created a commission to oversee national elections in Korea. Barred from access to the Soviet occupation zone, the commission oversaw the election of the National Assembly in the south in 1948. This body then elected Rhee as the first president. The Republic of Korea was formally established in May 1948. War once again broke out on the Korean Peninsula when North Korean troops crossed the 38th parallel in a failed attempt to reunify the nation under communist rule. The United States promptly intervened in the conflict as part of a UN police action. The Korean War cemented the patron-client relationship between the United States and South Korea. In 1954 the two countries signed a mutual defense treaty that formalized their bilateral security arrangements. Although their numbers were reduced after the 1970s, U.S. troops were stationed in South Korea from then
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on. Additionally, the United States continued to supply generous military aid to build up South Korea’s defense capabilities. South Korea contributed forces to help the United States in Vietnam from 1965 to 1973. Authoritarian rule characterized the government of South Korea. Rhee combined bellicose rhetoric against the north with repressive tactics at home to silence political opposition. In 1952 he pushed for a change to the popularly elected presidency. Four years later he pushed through a questionable constitutional amendment that permitted a lifelong presidency. This allowed him to run for president again in 1956 and 1960. Meanwhile, domestic, social, and economic problems generated widespread student protests. Rhee resigned and fled to Hawaii, where he lived in exile until his death in 1965. After a short interregnum during which the country turned to a new constitution that established parliamentary democracy, three military men followed as presidents in South Korea. The first, General Park Chung Hee, launched a coup in May 1961 to overthrow the nine-month-old parliamentary government and placed the Republic of Korea under military rule for two years. At the end of 1963 the country adopted a new constitution that permitted presidents to serve two four-year terms, and Park was duly elected to the office. But he would continue to manipulate constitutional processes, or, in some cases, suspend them altogether, in order to remain in power. In 1971 he declared a state of emergency, suspended the constitution, dissolved the National Assembly, and then promulgated a new Yushin (revitalization) constitution. The Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), which he established, was used to intimidate South Korean dissenters. Park relied on emergency decrees to repress this opposition to his regime; protesters were given long jail terms, a number of students were executed, and the press faced increasingly harsh censorship. Park’s regime finally came to an end when the director of the KCIA assassinated him in October 1979. During the Park Chung Hee era, South Korea made its transition to a modern economy. Inspired by the Japanese economic miracle, the government adopted a series of five-year development plans aimed at transforming an agrarian nation to an industrial power. Comparatively low labor costs allowed South Korea to compete effectively in such labor-intensive industries as textiles. In the 1970s the country shifted its focus away from labor-intensive light industries to heavy industries. This government-controlled economic development effort bore fruit as economic growth rates increased.
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The capital of the Republic of Korea is Seoul (above), located near the border with North Korea. The Republic of Korea had an estimated population of 48,422,644 in 2005 and has a government based on a presidential model.
In December 1979 General Chun Doo Hwan, a veteran of the Vietnam War, came to power in a coup. Within months he declared martial law. Charging that pro-democracy student demonstrations in Kwangju Province had been instigated by North Korean infiltrators, he acquired emergency powers that would allow him to disregard any constitutionally recognized rights of the people. He also embarked on a campaign to root out those who criticized his regime. Among those he arrested were three longtime civilian critics of authoritarian rule: Kim Young Sam, Kim Dae Jung, and Kim Jong Pil. But protests persisted, and in 1987 Chun stepped aside in favor of his handpicked successor, Roh Tae Woo, who won a presidential election with only 36 percent of the vote. Under Roh, South Korea began to pursue new directions in foreign policy in keeping with the geopolitical
trend that hearkened the end of antagonistic camps in the cold war. Roh followed up on an earlier proposal to exchange visits between North and South Korea. Following sports and cultural exchanges, the two countries signed the 1991 Basic Agreement on Reconciliation, Non-Aggression, and Cooperation of Exchanges. Politics in South Korea followed a pattern of democraticization from the late 1980s onward. Kim Young Sam, a longtime critic of Park Chung Hee’s authoritarian rule, emerged victorious in the 1992 presidential elections, becoming the first civilian president in more than three decades. Kim initiated a campaign to root out longtime corruption in government. Both the former presidents Chun and Roh were indicted for corruption and their roles in the 1979 military coup. Kim Young Sam also faced pressure to liberalize the South Korean economy. Widely recognized as one of the
Korean War (1950–1953)
economic miracles in Asia, South Korea had an average per capita income of $10,600. By 1997 economic growth in South Korea showed signs of abatement due to the effects of the Asian financial crisis. The resulting labor and student protests eventually led to the victory of a longtime opposition leader, Kim Dae Jung, in the presidential elections. Kim Dae Jung presided over a country in the throes of an economic downturn. He pushed for bold reforms to ameliorate the situation. The South Korean leadership worked with the International Monetary Fund in its rescue effort. By 1999 the economy was well on its way to recovery. It was in foreign relations that President Kim Dae Jung would leave his mark. He pursued efforts to build a more cordial relationship with his northern neighbor by providing economic assistance to the beleaguered north. Such efforts, Kim hoped, would end North Korean isolation and eventually change its governmental system. Although Kim’s policy did not yield concrete results, his summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in 2000 raised hopes about eventual reconciliation between the two Koreas. For his efforts, President Kim won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000. Roh Moo-hyun of the Millennium Democratic Party (MDP) became president after the 2002 elections. Further reading: Cummings, Bruce. Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History. New York: Norton, 1997; Kim, ChunKil. The History of Korea. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005; Oberdorfer, Don. The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History. New York: Basic Books, 1999; Stueck, William. The Korean War: An International History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. Soo Chun Lu
Korean War (1950–1953) The first major conflict of the cold war began in June 1950 and ended in an inconclusive armistice on July 27, 1953. Long considered a “forgotten war” in which almost 4 million people, including 136,000 U.S. citizens, were killed or wounded, the Korean conflict attracted increased academic and popular attention in the early 21st century. Partition of the ancient former kingdom of Korea resulted from Allied maneuvers near the end of World War II. Occupied by Japan during the war, Korea was divided in 1945 at the 38th parallel. The Soviets occu-
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pied the northern area while the United States supervised the southern sector. As the cold war between these former allies intensified, this partition line became a new “Iron Curtain” dividing Koreans from each other. So when the U.S. State Department learned in June 1950 that Communist North Korean forces had crossed the 38th parallel into anticommunist South Korea, President Harry S. Truman feared that South Korean forces alone would be unable to stop apparent Soviet plans to make all of Korea a communist regime. Taking advantage of a temporary Soviet boycott of the United Nations (UN) Security Council, Truman persuaded UN members to declare North Korea the aggressor. This, rather than a congressional declaration of war, became the justification for fielding a joint UN force, dominated by U.S. officers and troops, to launch a “police action” in Korea. UN forces were overwhelmed and pushed ever southward by the North Koreans until September, when General Douglas MacArthur, a World War II hero and Japan’s postwar governor, executed a daring amphibious assault at Inchon, just west of South Korea’s capital of Seoul. By October the 38th parallel was once again under UN control. But MacArthur wanted to go further. Meeting in October with the president MacArthur assured Truman that neighboring China would not interfere if UN forces reunited Korea under U.S. protection. China, fresh from its own communist revolution in 1949 and secretly armed by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, took exception. By the bitter winter of 1951 waves of Chinese soldiers had entered Korea and were again pushing UN troops southward. Yet MacArthur continued hostile moves against the Chinese and accused Commander in Chief Truman of “appeasement.” By the time Truman, supported unanimously by his Joint Chiefs of Staff, fired MacArthur for insubordination in April, the Korean conflict had settled into a violent stalemate centered on the original partition line. Peace negotiations began in June 1951, but foundered on the issue of repatriation. Many Chinese and North Korean war prisoners were unwilling to return to the regimes that had sent them into war. The Korean stalemate became a venomous election issue in the United States, inspiring Republicans like Senator Joe McCarthy of Minnesota to question Truman’s and the Democrats’ patriotism. Elected president by a large margin in 1952, former General Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican, visited the Korean front lines after taking office, but no formal peace treaty ever resulted. A July cease-fire was declared, and the 38th
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With her brother carried on her back, a Korean girl walks past a stalled U.S. M-26 tank at Haengju, Korea.
parallel, augmented by a DMZ (demilitarized zone) on either side, again marked the continuing division between North and South Korea. Over the years fighting occasionally broke out along the DMZ. North Korea remained a secretive and fanatically communist regime, while South Korea, despite difficulties adapting democratic political processes, became a major manufacturing power in Asia, rivaling Japan. Further reading: Blair, Clay. The Forgotten War: America in Korea 1950–1953. New York: Times Books, 1987; Stueck, William, ed. The Korean War in World History. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004. Marsha E. Ackermann
Kubitschek, Juscelino
(1902–1976) Brazilian president A canny political centrist best remembered for the construction of the new capital city of Brasília during his term as president of Brazil (1956–61), Juscelino Kubitschek bequeathed a complex political and economic legacy. Coming on the heels of the populist military dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas (president 1930–45, 1951–54), Kubitschek dispensed with Vargas’s sympathies toward fascism and dictatorial style of governance, distanced himself from the military while endeavoring to placate it, and retained many of his predecessor’s
populist policies—including state-supported industrialization and aggressive promotion of foreign investment and economic development. His term saw rapid economic growth and major advances in all major industries. It also left behind record government debt, a highly-mobilized and polarized civil society, and a disgruntled military. Three years after he left office, Brazil descended into military dictatorship that lasted until the mid-1980s (1964–85). Kubitschek de Oliviera was born in the small backcountry town of Diamantina in the state of Minas Gerais on September 12, 1902. His father, a salesman, died when he was two; his mother, a schoolteacher of Slovak ancestry, raised him. Educated as a medical doctor, in 1934 he was elected to the Minas Gerais State Assembly, a position he resigned in 1937 upon Vargas’s announcement of his quasi-fascist Estado Novo (New State). Serving as mayor of Belo Horizonte from 1940 and the Minas Gerais State Assembly from 1945, he won the presidency in 1955 on the ticket of the Progressive Social Party (Partido Social Progresista) under the slogan “fifty years of progress in five.” His critics later lambasted his administration for causing “fifty years of inflation in five.” On taking office, he and his technocrats drew up a Program of Goals, identifying specific growth targets for each economic sector. The basic idea was to bring private capital under state direction to achieve rapid economic growth by focusing on key industries and infrastructure. When he left office, Brazil had a sustainable automobile industry, for instance, built virtually from scratch. Similar growth targets were met in electrification, road construction, and related sectors. This rapid growth carried a high price, however. As state expenditures grew, Brazil’s foreign debt grew, inflation soared, and economic inequality—already among the world’s starkest—increased. Working to placate a resurgent left, a recalcitrant right, and an increasingly disenchanted military, Kubitschek ended up with far more adversaries than allies. His administration met many of its targets for growth, investment, and industrialization, while leaving to his successor a macroeconomic mess and sharpened political divisions that culminated in a prolonged military takeover. After the 1964 coup he went into exile, living in Europe and North America, before returning to Brazil in 1967. Nine years later, on October 22, 1976, he died in a car crash. Further reading: Alexander, Robert J. Juscelino Kubitschek and the Development of Brazil. Athens: Ohio University
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Center for International Studies, 1991; Skidmore, Thomas E. Brazil: Five Centuries of Change. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Michael J. Schroeder
Kurds The Kurds were most likely an Indo-European people who migrated from Central Asia to Asia Minor and northern Mesopotamian regions, living among Assyrian and Babylonian inhabitants sometime between the second and first millennium b.c.e. For centuries the Kurds maintained their own civilization, establishing a number of kingdoms and tribal fiefdoms in the high mountain areas in the Iran-Mesopotamia regions. The modern Kurdish people are the descendants of the original Kurds who were living in the Zagros Mountains and northern Mesopotamia, and they now populate territories known as Kurdistan, regions stretching from northwestern Iran to southeastern Turkey, northern Iraq, and northeastern Syria. Kurdish tribes can also be found in other countries such as Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Lebanon. Kurds are the fourth-largest ethnic population living in southwest Asia. Most sources indicate that today there are more than 30 million Kurds. Kurdish societal structure remains tribal, with loyalty of each Kurdish group directed toward an immediate family clan, but many modern Kurds now live in large cities. They do share a common cultural heritage that goes beyond their tribal social structure. The distinct Kurdish language belongs to the Iranian subgroup of the Indo-European languages. The Kurds are mainly Sunni Muslims of the Shafi’i theological school of thought, which places more emphasis on the consensus of the community than on the authority of individual clerical scholars as a source of interpreting Islamic law. Many Kurds in Iraq, Iran, and Turkey also adhere to Sufism, or the mystical branch of Islam. Kurdish Islam evolved into a distinct form of vernacular religion with unique Kurdish cultural characteristics. A minority of Kurds are also Shi’i Muslims, Smaller Baha’i, and Christian; Jewish communities can also be found among the Kurdish population, with the Jewish Kurds mainly living in Israel. The modern political history of the Kurds has been a quest for national autonomy. Although the 19th century saw a number of rebellions, Kurdish nationalism made its first appearance with the 1880 revolt of the Kurdish
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League, led by the charismatic Sheikh ‘Ubaydallah of Nehri. Despite defeat by the Ottomans, Sheikh ‘Ubaydallah’s movement marked the first Kurdish national rebellion that included Kurds of the Ottoman Empire and Qajar Persia. With the rise of the Young Turks Revolution in 1908, which removed the rule of ‘Abdulhamid and restored the 1887 constitution, the Kurds began to form their own political parties. Following the demise of the Ottoman Empire, on August 10, 1920, Britain, France, and Italy designed the Treaty of Sèvres, which officially recognized Kurdish claims for national autonomy and an independent Kurdistan. The treaty was signed by the Allies and Turkey, recognizing that the Kurds have the right to exercise local autonomy. Following the signing of the Lausanne Treaty in 1923, which mainly settled the boundaries between Armenia, Greece, and Turkey, the newly founded Atatürk government rejected the Treaty of Sèvres and subsequently found an opportunity to suppress the Kurdish right for national independence. The Kurds revolted against the Turkish state in 1925, 1930, and 1937, all three revolts led by Sheikh Sa‘id and Sayyid Reza of Dersim, and all three brutally defeated. After that, all Kurdish nationalist movements experienced the same fate. A recent liberation movement for national autonomy was led by the Kurdish Worker’s Party, or Partyiya Karkeren Kurdistan (PKK). The Marxist nationalist party was founded in 1973 and toward the end of the 1970s expanded its influence in the Kurdish regions of Turkey by using guerrilla warfare and terrorism as a way to destabilize the Turkish authority. The PKK proved to be the most violent of all Kurdish political groups in the modern history of Turkish nationalism. In return the Turkish army used various violent means to put down the Kurdish rebellion. These included the arbitrary murder and detention of Kurdish civilians, and the repression of Kurdish thinkers, journalists, and businessmen. The PKK lost much of its strength with the 1999 capture of the organization’s leader, Abullah Ocalan. On August 2004 the party declared a unilateral cease-fire. The struggle for Kurdish nationalism, however, was most fruitful in Iraq. From 1919 to 1945 all the Kurdish rebellions against the British Army and the Iraqi regime were ruthlessly crushed. The Barzani family played a central role in these rebellions. Mustafa Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) led the struggle when, on July 14, 1958, the monarchy was overthrown by General Abdul Karim Qassim. The republican coup raised the Kurdish expectation for more equal participation in the Iraqi state. But Qasim’s regime quickly discarded
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Barzani’s call for Kurdish independence, and in 1961 he renewed fighting with the Kurds. From 1961 to 1963 and from 1974 to 1975, Mustafa Barzani led an armed struggle. Later in the 1970s Barzani went into exile in the United States, where he died in 1979. In 1979 Masoud Barzani succeeded his father to lead the KDP. With the help of thousands of armed fighters, the peshmargan, he gained control of major parts of northern Iraq. After the First Gulf War the KDP emerged as one of the most significant Kurdish political organizations, operating with relative freedom to govern sections of northern Iraq while achieving the first enduring semiautonomous Kurdish state in history. In the early 21st century Barzani continued to play a major role in Kurdish politics in Iraq, where he shared power with his Kurdish rival Jalal Talabani. Talabani was a major Kurdish nationalist and the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which was established in 1975. Formed mainly by urban intellectuals and leftist thinkers, the PUK emerged as KDP’s main political competitor. In the early 1990s he helped the Kurdish uprising against the Ba’athist state while working closely with the United States, the United Kingdom, and France to establish the no-fly zone over northern Iraq to protect the Kurds from bombing and chemical attacks by Saddam Hussein’s army. After years of rivalry, the PUK joined forces with the KDP and other Kurdish parties to create the Democratic Patriotic Alliance of Kurdistan to represent the Kurds in the Iraqi National Assembly elections of 2005 and 2006. In post-Ba’athist Iraq, Talabani was named the president of Iraq on April 6, 2005, and again on April 22, 2006, by the Iraqi National Assembly.
Minaret towers in Kuwait City. The tiny nation became the center of world attention in the early 1990s after Iraq invaded it.
See also Gulf War, Second (Iraq War). Further reading: McDowell, David. Modern History of the Kurds. London: I.B. Tauris, 2004; McKiernan, Kevin. The Kurds: A People in Search of Their Homeland. London: St. Martin’s Press, 2006; Yildiz, Kerim. The Kurds in Iraq: The Past, Present and Future. London: Pluto Press, 2004; Yildiz, Kerim. The Kurds in Turkey: EU Accession and Human Rights. London: Pluto Press, 2005. Babak Rahimi
Kuwait Kuwait is one of the Gulf States, located at the head of the Persian Gulf, with Iraq to its north and east and Saudi Arabia to its south. Iran is located directly across
the Gulf waters. The geography of Kuwait is dominated by mostly flat deserts interspersed with a few oases in Kuwait’s 6,880 square miles of territory. Kuwait is a diminutive form of the word for fort. The official language is Arabic. From the 19th century onward the Sabah clan allied with the indigenous commercial elites, and Kuwait developed as a thriving mercantile community with an economy based on foreign trade. Although never directly under Ottoman rule, the Al-Sabahs paid financial tributes to the empire and recognized the sultan’s power, but Ottoman threats to annex Kuwait pushed the Sabahs to ally with Britain. An 1899 treaty gave Britain control over Kuwait’s foreign affair, and Kuwait became a British protectorate. From that time forward, border issues continually plagued the country. The British relinquished control in 1961.
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After independence the Sabah family governed Kuwait as emirs with a constitutional monarchy. The emir ruled the country through the council of ministers, which mostly consisted of family members appointed by the emir himself. The judicial system was based on Islamic law, or sharia, particularly the Maliki school of jurisprudence, but many of the criminal and commercial laws were based on prior British laws. The legislative branch was composed of a National Assembly (Majlis al-Ummah), whose 50 members were elected to four-year terms. Political parties are legally banned and instead, several organizations have representatives in parliament. Prior to 2005, voting was restricted to men who were able to prove that their ancestry in Kuwait dated prior to 1920 and who were not members of the armed forces. In 2005, women were granted the right to vote. After 2005 the government granted citizenship to 5,000 biduns, people without documents—originally from Syria, Iraq, and Jordan—per year. Foreigners, called expatriate workers in Kuwait, are needed to fill positions in the workforce and especially in the oil, construction, and service sectors. Since these immigrant workers are not entitled to free government services and benefits and cannot become citizens, there is some hostility between the native Kuwaiti population and the majority immigrant population. The economy is mostly based on oil and overseas investments. In the 1970s the petroleum industry increased its extraction and processing capabilities, and by the mid1980s 80 percent of the oil extracted in Kuwait was also being refined there. Oil production led to a Kuwaiti economic boom, with both direct and indirect services and products. By 2006 Kuwait had one of the highest per capita incomes in the world. See also Gulf War, First (1991); Hussein, Saddam. Further reading: Al-Mughni, Haya. Women in Kuwait: The Politics of Gender. London: Saqi Books, 2001; Ismael, Jacqueline S. Kuwait: Dependency and Class in a Rentier State. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1993; Tetreault, Mary Ann. Stories of Democracy: Politics and Society in Contemporary Kuwait. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. Randa A. Kayyali
Kyoto Treaty The purpose of the Kyoto Treaty, also known as the Kyoto Protocol, is to reduce global warming by reduc-
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ing greenhouse gas emissions. Countries that ratify the Kyoto Treaty agree to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to 5 percent below their 1990 level by the year 2012. The treaty was first proposed in 1997. The Kyoto Treaty took effect on February 16, 2005, after ratification by Russia met the requirement that the treaty be ratified by countries accounting for at least 55 percent of global carbon emissions. As of September 2005 156 countries representing over 61 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions had signed the treaty; notable exceptions included the United States and Australia. Developing countries such as China and Russia are exempt from the requirement that they reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Greenhouse gases contribute to global warming through what is known as the “greenhouse effect.” The analogy refers to a greenhouse used for gardening, in which sun rays are allowed to penetrate the glass walls and ceiling and warm the air within the greenhouse, and the warmed air is prevented from leaving the greenhouse by those same glass walls and ceiling. In the case of Earth, the planet is warmed by solar radiation which can penetrate Earth’s atmosphere, but a proportion of radiation reflected off the Earth cannot escape back through the atmosphere due to its different wavelength. Scientists estimate that without the greenhouse effect, the average surface temperature on Earth would be –18°C. The Kyoto Treaty allows nations to engage in carbon emissions trading. This means that a signatory may increase their carbon emissions and remain within compliance by purchasing “credits” from countries that have decreased their emissions. Countries can also qualify for credits by engaging in clean energy programs and fostering forests and other natural systems referred to as “carbon sinks” because they remove carbon dioxide from the environment. The current concern with greenhouse gases has to do with the increasing quantities of those gases, and the role they are believed to play in global warming, that is, an increase in the average temperature of the Earth’s surface and atmosphere. It is the consensus scientific opinion that global temperature has risen 0.4 – 0.8ºC since the late 19th century and that human activities are the cause of most of this change. Scientists who endorse the global warming hypothesis predict that the rise in temperature will continue to intensify with increasing industrial development and the resultant increase in greenhouse gas emissions. Predicted effects of continued global warming include a rise in sea level, leading to
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coastal flooding, extreme weather, and food shortages due to crop failures. Not all scientists accept the global warming hypothesis, however. Alternative explanations include the argument that the increase in temperature has not been clearly established, that it is within the range of normal variation to be expected over time, or that it is due to the period when measurement began having been unusually cold. Others argue that although the global temperature does seem to be rising, there is no proof that the rise in temperature was caused by human activity. See also environmental problems. Further reading: Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, http://law-ref. org/KYOTO/index.html; Maslin, Mark. Global Warming: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004; Viktor, David G. The Collapse of the Kyoto Protocol and the Struggle to Slow Global Warming. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. Sarah Boslaugh
A hurricane photographed from space. Global warming is predicted to lead to a rise in sea levels and more frequent hurricanes.
L Latin American culture Latin American culture is as diverse as its people. The region is vast: 8 million square miles of land organized into 20 countries, spread across South and Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Centuries of colonization created a rich ethnic mix, combining indigenous peoples with settlers from Europe and slaves from Africa, along with smaller populations of imported workers from Asia and the Middle East. What is now seen as the common culture of the region is the result of generations of adaptation and change. The traditional music of early indigenous civilizations was mostly lost during the first violent decades of colonization. Early Spanish adventurers noted that the music of Mesoamericans was exclusively for religious ceremony, not for entertainment. They played wind instruments, such as wooden panpipes and a clay flute called the tlapitzalli, or percussion instruments. The Spanish brought with them stringed instruments and a mature musical style derived from their own multiethnic background. Later, African slaves added their unique vocal rhythms and their instruments—including the marimba, the clave, conga drums, and maracas. Together, these elements were fused into a variety of new and different musical and vocal styles that came to worldwide acclaim in the 20th century. Music and dance grew together; most popular dance styles carry the same name as their musical styles. Latin dance tends to be highly physical, with steps and patterns drawn from different ethnic and cultural styles.
The tango, for example, developed in the port cities of Argentina in the early 20th century, first as a music form blending several ethnic styles, including the Argentine and Uruguayan milonga, the Cuban habanera, the Slavic polka and mazurka, Italian street music, the Spanish contredanse and flamenco, and African-Uruguary an candombe. Originally the music of the underclass, the tango became popular in Europe and America in the 1920s, spurred by the Italian-born film star Rudolph Valentino, who had been an exhibition dancer specializing in the tango before he became the first sex symbol of the movies. It was the first in a long line of Latin dance styles to gain popularity both inside and outside their native lands. Other forms of Latin music and dance include the samba, the rumba, the cha-cha, the paso doble, the mambo, salsa, and merengue, among many others. From the beginning of the colonial period to the 19th century, Latin American painting was dominated by European styles. Early Latin art was also dominated by Catholic iconography. Local artists learned the techniques of Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, and Flemish masters, frequently interlacing these styles with the themes and traditions of their precolonial world. With the advent of independence in the early years of the 19th century, Latin American art began to move away from the baroque towards a more simple, neoclassical style, strongly influenced by current French trends. As nations began to build their own identities, artists were on hand to memorialize revolutionary leaders and pivotal events. Spanish and colonial themes were still present, but when it came time to set up their 257
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universities and art institutes, it was French institutions that provided the model. Latin art remained focused on portraiture, landscape and decorative art until the 1920s, missing out almost entirely on the Impressionist movement and its offshoots. Muralism was the first major art movement to bring Latin American artists world acclaim. The movement arose in Mexico in the 1920s, when a group of established artists began using public spaces for huge paintings that usually focused on themes of social justice and equality. Through their work, such artists as Diego Rivera, José Clemente, and David Alfaro Siqueiros became active participants in shaping the political and social movements of the time. Murals were public art, meant to challenge and inspire all citizens. Muralism quickly spread outside of Mexico, inspiring artists from the United States to the Chile. By 1945 many Latin artists were turning away from nationalistic themes and toward the international avantgarde and modernist movements. In recent decades, artists have focused on the relationship between the modern era and the distant past as well as the national and the international, and mix a variety of media, often drawing from the folk art traditions of indigenous peoples. Latin American literature began with the conquistadors and missionaries of the 16th century and was dominated by Spanish and Portuguese styles and techniques for generations. Early Latin American writers benefited from the literary movements in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, and elements of French classicism were present by the early 1700s. Mexico City, Lima, Quito, Bogotá, Caracas, and Buenos Aires grew into literary centers on a par with European salons. With independence in the early 1800s most Latin American writers turned to nation-building as they joined the effort to create a national identity out of the ashes of colonialism. They also had a new form to play with: fiction, a genre long forbidden by the Spanish crown. The first Latin American novel was published in 1816. Politics and literature were closely intertwined throughout the 19th century, with new works not only by essayists and historians but also poets, playwrights, and novelists. Romanticism also struck a deep chord in Latin American art and literature during the period. Contemporary Latin American literature runs the gamut from cosmopolitan intellectualism to magical realism drawn from traditions of the rural past. Since the 1960s it has taken a prominent place in the international literary world. Poets Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda, and Octavio Paz were awarded the Nobel Prize
in literature in 1945, 1971, and 1990, respectively; Miguel Angel Asturias took the Nobel Prize in literature in 1967, and Gabriel García Márquez won in 1982. Cinema came to Latin America in the early years of the 20th century, but it took many years for it to spread evenly across the region. Only Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil had the kind of large, stable economies necessary to launch a film industry. Even in these countries, early directors were marginalized by European and American studios that dominated the film distribution systems and monopolized Latin markets. This did not change until the Great Depression and World War II, when financial and political concerns slowed down the flow of foreign films. However, by the mid-1950s, the industry had drifted back toward the prewar status quo. Latin American film came into its own in the 1960s– 70s, as native-born directors tapped into the new experimental film techniques coming out of Europe and the social and political movements sweeping across their countries to create a unique cinematic voice. The last 25 years have seen an expansion and maturation of Latin American cinema. As in the United States, the industry is constantly trying to find a balance between popular entertainment and more artistic ventures. Further reading: King, John. The Cambridge Companion to Modern Latin American Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004; ———. Magical Reels. London: Verso, 2000; Sullivan, Edward. Latin American Art in the Twentieth Century. Oxford: Phaidon, 2000. Heather K. Michon
Latin American politics On a December day in 1956 a small band of armed men pushed off from the shores of eastern Mexico with their eyes on Cuba. Fidel Castro and Ernesto “Che” Guevara were among this group of revolutionaries, and they dreamt of a new Cuba free from social classes, capitalism, and American imperialism. After two years of guerrilla warfare, Castro and his band succeeded in overthrowing the Cuban government and seized power. Almost immediately their new vision of a socially just society unfolded as the new regime expropriated foreign holdings, transferred industries to state ownership, and “volunteered” Cuban citizens to work on state-run farms. This new vision of Cuba stemmed from the growing tide of Latin American nationalists turning toward Marxist theories in the decades after World War II. This
brand of Marxism centered on erasing centuries of inequity and poverty with far-reaching change aimed at dismantling capitalism and promoting social justice for all. The struggle between rich and poor dominated the rhetoric of Latin American Marxism, but with a unique spin that included U.S. multinational corporations among the rich. The Cuban revolution presented a new political paradigm to Latin America, one driven by Marxis ideology and armed revolution. It would influence Latin American politics for the rest of the 20th century. As the economic boom of World War II faded in the 1950s, international demand for Latin American exports—chiefly agricultural—waned. High machinery costs driven by postwar rebuilding in Europe held back industrialization and economic growth in Latin America. Economic hard times fused with the legacy of conquest and colonialism incited demands for sweeping, fundamental change. Some Latin Americans, including Fidel Castro, explored and then embraced Marxist ideology as a viable solution to ending the region’s poverty and economic dependency on industrialized nations. The cold war wore heavily on U.S.–Latin American relations, and the Cuban Revolution signaled an alarming turn to an American government in the throes of the “red scare.” Even more distressing to American policymakers was Castro’s involvement in the launching of the Organization of Latin American Solidarity (OLAS) in 1967 to encourage Marxist revolutions throughout the region. Leftist revolutionaries such as the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) in El Salvador, the Montoneros and People’s Revolutionary Army (ERP) in Argentina, and the Nicaraguan Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) are some of the armed Marxist guerrilla movements supported by Castro and OLAS. The United States sponsored a military alliance with anticommunist governments throughout Latin America. This national security doctrine increased the power of the military in Latin American societies as the United States encouraged military involvement in cracking down on Marxist guerrillas and their supporters. Soon some military leaders viewed civilian democratic governments as corrupt and a hindrance to social and economic change. These generals believed that the solution to Latin American problems lie in rapid social and economic development. During the 1970s almost every Latin American country succumbed to military rule. Many of these authoritarian governments looked to a free market economy as the means to change and seized upon low interest rates to borrow heavily to finance development. Any protests or cries for change, which increasingly came from urban residents-turned-guerrillas, were vehemently
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suppressed. In Argentina, scholars estimate that as many as 20,000 people “disappeared” at the hands of the military. The El Salvadoran military massacred peasants thought to be aiding leftist guerrillas, and in Guatemala, tens of thousands of indigenous people suspected of similar actions were killed by the military. By the 1980s government deficit spending coupled with a wavering global economy resulted in skyrocketing inflation and foreign debts. This economic crisis provoked criticism of the status quo from citizens and accusations that military leadership represented incompetent government. One by one, Latin America’s military regimes retreated to the barracks and handed leadership back to civilians. The 1990s saw many democratic, civilian leaders embracing neoliberalism, a philosophy centered on making Latin America competitive on the global market. State-owned industry was privatized, protective tariffs reduced, military budgets cut, foreign investment encouraged, and social programs and bureaucratic structure streamlined. More benefits of modernity came to Latin America, especially technology, yet most Latin Americans remained too poor to participate in free market capitalism as consumers. A few guerrilla movements continued to flourish, like Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) in Peru, violently working toward their goal of revolution. Latin American politics from the 1950s represents tumultuous decades, marred by the violence of “dirty wars” perpetuated by U.S.-backed military regimes. Marxist guerrillas throughout this time period sought revolutionary change of Latin American society. By the 2000s the move to the left in Latin American politics saw Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva winning the presidential elections in Brazil in December 2002, Evo Morales being elected as president of Bolivia in December 2005, an, in the following month, Michelle Bachelet won the second round of the presidential elections in Chile, becoming the first woman president of Chile and the first left-wing president since the overthrow of Salvador Allende. Moreover, the move by Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, a socialist, toward a national referendum in 2007 to reelect him to the presidency despite constitutional limits, foretold a continuing leftwing power center in Latin America. See also El Salvador, revolution and civil war in (1970s–1990s); Guatemala, civil war in (1960– 1996); Nicaraguan revolution (1979–1990). Further reading: Bakewell, Peter. A History of Latin American c. 1450 to the Present. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004; Harris, Richard L., ed. Globalization and Development in
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Latin America. Whitby, Canada: de Sitter Publications, 2005; Lewis, Paul H. Authoritarian Regimes in Latin America: Dictators, Despots, and Tyrants. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2006; Wiarda, Howard J., and Harvey F. Kline, eds. A Concise Introduction to Latin American Politics and Development. Boulder. CO: Westview Press, 2007. Kathleen Legg
Latin American social issues The recent history of Latin America is a story of profound political and economic change. During the second half of the 20th century, Latin America witnessed a transformation of society as the region struggled to find itself in the face of modernity and economic expansion. Crushing poverty facilitated alternative forms of religious faith that spoke to the condition of many Latin Americans. Migration from the countryside to the city and north to the United States spoke to a yearning for a better life. A thriving drug trade centered on a global market employed organized violence against national governments that tried to curb the trade. Centuries of oppression led to an organized and influential indigenous movement that mobilized to demand Indian rights and autonomy. Latin American countries plunged into the uncertainty of the oil industry with the hopes of increased revenues and instead found unpredictable results and mixed blessings. These factors offer a window into the dramatic social transformation of Latin America from 1950 to the present. Latin American spirituality underwent profound changes in recent history. Liberation theology spoke to a new turn in the role of the Catholic Church in Latin America, although it was not a phenomenon unique to the region. For centuries, the church stood as a conservative element in association with the state; the church legitimized authoritarian rule. However, beginning in the 1960s, many priests, nuns, and lay workers drew on their personal experiences working with the poor to question the responsibility of the church in the unequal distribution of wealth in Latin America. Some Latin American theologists began to speak of the role of the church and Christians in helping the poor, a mission clearly laid out in the Bible. Liberation theology is an understanding of the Christian faith developed out of the suffering and social injustice experienced by the poor. As such, it is a critique of society and the ideologies supporting the dominant hegemony, including the traditional role of the Catholic Church. It gave the poor a voice and created new forms
of community-based activism. Liberation theology was a formidable force in Latin America for a few decades— especially in Central America, Brazil, and Chile. Liberation theory gained momentum in 1968 when a group of 130 Latin American bishops met in Medellín, Colombia to discuss the church and its relationship to the populace. The bishops promoted an empowering education program for illiterate rural peasants that affirmed the dignity and self worth of the students. This education was carried out in small community-based groups where people could gather together to read the Bible and discuss its relevance to their lives without a priest or church building. Engaging Catholicism without a priest represented a new idea. Rural priests often served thousands of parishioners and could only visit some communities once a year. Priests, nuns, and lay people used the Medellín conference as a springboard for a new approach to their work with the poor. Those Catholic personnel dedicated to the poor quickly learned through their charitable work that the condition of the lowest classes of Latin American society could only be relieved through sweeping structural changes. This would involve direct political action. Some base communities served as the vehicle for political action as participants experienced an awakening, or consciousness-raising about their devalued position in society. Many Christian-based communities served not only as sites of literacy education and Bible study but also places where a reinterpretation of traditional religion promoted a transformative perspective on the world. Some groups worked toward improvements in local basic services, such as healthcare and transportation. In spite of this, base communities represented a small fraction of Catholics, and by the 1980s, enthusiasm for liberation theology waned. Protestantism is a relatively new player in Catholic Latin America. Brazil is home to Latin America’s largest Protestant community with half of the region’s estimated 40 million Protestants, but Central America boasts the largest number of evangelicals in terms of the percentage of the population. European migration to the continent brought the traditional Protestant churches, such as German Lutheranism and British Anglicanism. Despite the influence of European immigrants, North American missionaries bear the responsibility for the tremendous growth in Protestantism in Latin America, especially evangelical forms like Pentecostalism. Sharing liberation theology’s sense of consciousness-raising, Pentecostalism allows participants a refuge from suffering and social injustice by providing a spiritual space in which believers can regain some feeling of control over their lives.
Additionally, unlike Catholicism and mainstream Protestantism, Pentecostalism permitted anyone to become a spiritual leader, even the illiterate and poverty stricken. Women, in particular, have been attracted to evangelical churches due to their inclusive nature. Evangelicalism has taken hold throughout the wartorn countries of Central America, especially in rural areas. In Guatemala rural Mayan women, mostly widows, fill evangelical churches in search of a sense of community that has been lost. These churches provide a network of support that replaces destroyed kinship ties. Protestant churches offer a religious alternative and a message of hope to the underdogs of society. For women, the evangelical Protestant ban on drinking alcohol makes Protestant husbands an attractive marriage partner. In addition, the phenomenon associated with Pentecostalism in particular, such as speaking in tongues and faith healing, has given women positions of power within their religious communities. Despite North American origins, evangelical Protestantism in Latin America is a unique phenomenon. Its churches emphasize the notion of community and belonging more than its northern counterparts. In addition, in Latin America being an evangelical does not necessarily denote a right-wing conservative political identity as it tends to in North America. Latin America’s economic setbacks have not only influenced new religious movements but have also led to mass migrations of people. Latin Americans have moved from the countryside to the city and from Latin America to North America. Prior to the 1930s the majority of Latin America’s population resided in rural areas. The global economic depression of the 1930s dealt a hard blow to the Latin American export economy, and rural residents began to leave the countryside. This exodus peaked over a 30-year period from 1950 to 1980 and succeeded in transforming Latin America’s social structure from predominantly rural to overwhelmingly urban. By 1980 family-based farming was no longer viable as market-oriented modern agribusiness became the norm. Thousands streamed into Latin America’s major cities in search of industrial jobs and a better life. Women comprised a majority of the rural-urban migrants, as industrialization opened many jobs for female workers. Rapid urbanization quickly outpaced housing, basic services, and job markets. Rural residents arrived in the cities to find dirty, disease-ridden, and overcrowded shantytowns with spotty electrical power and water shortages. Ruralurban migration caused a labor surplus, which led to the rise of a vast informal sector of the economy consisting of street vendors, rubbish scavengers, and prostitutes.
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Latin Americans also migrated north to the United States for economic, political, and social reasons. Mexicans currently represent the greatest percentage of Latin Americans immigrating to the United States. They often have come looking for work, and many resided in the southwest long before it belonged to the United States. During the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, Mexicans and Mexican Americans routinely crossed back and forth over the border, with little or no regulation. During the 1930s, the government supported the repatriation of Mexican workers to provide more jobs for Americans. However, with the onset of World War II, labor shortages fueled the Bracero Program, which allowed Mexican agricultural workers to come into the country on a temporary basis. The Bracero Program lasted until 1964. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 called for penalties for those hiring undocumented workers, but also granted amnesty to many undocumented immigrants already living in the United States. The Immigration Act of 1990 favored the legal immigration of family members of U.S. citizens and permanent residents. cuban immigrants Many Cuban immigrants came to the United States fleeing a repressive political regime. Cubans enjoyed a privileged status in relation to other Latin American immigrants due to the U.S. foreign policy on Cuba. As early as 1960 the U.S. government had created a special center for Cuban refugees, and their path to legal residence in the United States was easily cleared. These first waves of immigrants represented the Cuban elite and middle class and individuals and families with financial resources, specialized job training, and American connections. In 1980 Fidel Castro opened the door for Cubans to leave the island, and a deluge of mostly male semi- and unskilled workers flowed into south Florida. This migration overwhelmed U.S. authorities, and many of the refugees were placed in detention camps for months. Currently U.S. officials observe a quota on Cuban immigrants, but the Cuban-American community continues to thrive and grow. Central Americans also have migrated to the United States seeking refuge from wars and violence that have disrupted the economy and everyday life, especially in El Salvador and Guatemala. In the 1980s migrants from El Salvador left their homes due to civil war and political repression. Unlike Cubans fleeing political repression, many Salvadorans were denied permanent residency and deported. Churches in the U.S. southwest developed a “sanctuary movement” to protest U.S. treatment of these refugees, providing a safe haven for those fleeing
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violence. In the 1990s a small minority of Salvadoran immigrants brought violence to the United States in the form of street gangs. Many of these gang members were targeted by U.S. immigration officials in Los Angeles, California, and sent back to El Salvador. Not only are Latin Americans moving north, Latin America drugs are making the trip as well. One of the largest social problems facing Latin America is drug trafficking, especially in Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru. The drug trade embodies simple supply and demand economics. This multinational drug trade negatively affects U.S.– Latin American relations as many of the region’s leaders believe that the U.S. war on drugs focuses unfairly on the supply side of the equation. Unfortunately, in countries suffering from crushing poverty, drugs represent a viable economic option. The debt crisis of the 1980s and the collapse of prices for tin and coffee on the international market fueled the Latin American drug trade. In several Latin American countries, Peru and Bolivia in particular, the drug trade acted as an economic buffer, offering alternative sources of income when other options vanished. The drug trade creates an atmosphere of violence. Drug cartels breed corruption and threaten the integrity and stability of the state, democracy, security, public health, moral values, and international reputation.
groups organizing for a better life. The sophistication and power of indigenous organizations forced many Latin American states to negotiate with Indian peoples and create new legislation that protected their rights. The traditional relationship between the state and its native peoples is changing, with indigenismo policies that strove for assimilation abandoned in favor of embracing multiculturalism and pluriethnicity. Despite claims of embracing multiculturalism, not all Latin American states have actually implemented policies aimed at improving the lives of indigenous peoples. One of the best-known indigenous movements occurred in 1994 in Chiapas, Mexico. Landless Maya formed the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) as an outlet for their struggle for rights and recognition in national life. The EZLN briefly occupied several towns in Chiapas. When negotiations with the Mexican state began, the first demands of the Zapatistas centered on Indian autonomy and rights. The EZLN did not advocate a separation from the Mexican nation-state, but rather called for the state to implement the tenets of the constitution of 1917 regarding indigenous peoples. The Zapatistas drew international attention to the plight of Mexico’s indigenous population and provided inspiration to other Indian groups in Latin America.
drug trade Poverty and unemployment in Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia—along with the high prices Latin American cocaine fetched in the United States—fueled the drug trade and offered viable economic alternatives. Colombia and Bolivia saw a significant boost to its national economy from drug revenues, but violence and corruption went hand-inhand with the economic boom. In Peru, the world’s largest producer of coca leaves, the environmental destruction wrought by the drug trade is appalling. Large tracks of rain forest have been clear-cut for cultivation, and the pesticides and herbicides used for growing coca have leached into forest water systems. The involvement of guerrillas in the drug trade has further complicated the situation, and threats to the integrity of the state continue in these nations. Despite billions of U.S. dollars poured into curbing the Latin American drug trade, major traffickers have been affected very little. The drug trade has impacted Latin American indigenous groups in remote rural areas, as they are often caught in the crossfire between traffickers and the government. In Peru many have fled the countryside for shantytowns in the cities, hoping to escape the violence brought on by traffickers and guerrillas, especially the Shining Path. Such issues have led to an explosion of indigenous
OIL INDUSTRY The oil industry directly affects the quality of life for all Latin Americans; unpredictable oil prices have varying impacts on the economy as a whole. Latin America has a few significant oil-producing countries: Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia. In fact, Mexico and Venezuela have become key suppliers to the United States. Latin America’s oil industry has undergone many transformations. From the 1930s to the 1970s, foreign owners controlled significant portions of the Latin American oil economy, with the exception of Mexico, which nationalized its oil industry in 1938. By the 1970s Latin America’s oil industry was mostly nationalized, as foreign investors looked to the oil fields of the Middle East instead. The Latin American oil industry has been subject to the volatile political, economic, and social history of Latin America, with varying degrees of success. While some nations expected their large oil reserves to clear the way for economic development, the region’s major oil-exporting economies experienced obstacles in transforming oil revenues into a continuous source of funding. High oil prices aided significant producers that were dependent on exports for revenue and foreign exchange, like Mexico, Venezuela, and Ecuador. For oil-importing countries, such as Brazil, Peru and Chile, the price of
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oil served as a vital factor in inflation, production costs, the trade balance, and currency strength. In the past 20 years, oil prices have been more precarious than any other export commodity. The impact of an unpredictable oil market fluctuates depending on a nation’s reliance on oil production and exports. The historical and current state of Latin America’s oil industry suggests that it is the management of oil resources, not oil wealth itself, that can create economic problems. Latin America’s tremendous economic growth and development after 1950 transformed the region but intensified the misery of many Latin Americans. Rapid growth and urbanization led to mass migrations of people trying to find a niche in a hostile environment. Industrial progress brought thousands of rural residents into Latin America’s major cities with the hope of a living wage, but failed to alleviate poverty. Devastating poverty fuels the drug trade, which for many peasants and indigenous people offers the only viable economic endeavor for survival. The oil industry, especially in Mexico and Venezuela, promised hope but has seemingly failed to materialize into concrete change for the better. Liberation theology and the growth of evangelical Protestantism speak to a suffering poor searching for a ray of light in a bleak world. The promises of prosperity that accompanied economic growth proved to be empty for many people in Latin America. Although Latin America experienced economic progress, true transformations of society and social justice continue to elude the region. Further Reading: Coerver, Don M., and Linda B. Hall, eds. Tangled Destinies: Latin America and the United States. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999; Garrard-Burnett, Virginia, and David Stoll, eds. Rethinking Protestantism in Latin America. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993; Joyce, Elizabeth, and Carlos Malamud, eds. Latin America and the Multinational Drug Trade. London: Macmillan Press, 1998; Maybury-Lewis, David. The Politics of Ethnicity: Indigenous Peoples in Latin American States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002; Mattiace, Shannan L. To See With Two Eyes. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2003. Kathleen Legg
Lebanese civil war The modern boundaries of Lebanon were drawn under the French Mandate, which replaced Ottoman rule after the latter’s defeat in World War I. Under Ottoman rule,
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Lebanon had been limited to the area of Mount Lebanon, which was inhabited by two major religious communities—Maronite Christians and Druze. With the conception of “greater Lebanon” in 1920, predominantly Sunni Muslim coastal cities such as Tripoli, Beirut, and Sidon, and the predominantly Shi’i Muslim south were annexed to Mount Lebanon, yet the 51 percent majority remained Maronite Christians. The Maronites and Sunnis made an agreement in 1943 in the National Pact, which distributed the presidency of the republic, the parliament, and the government posts according to religion in a confessional system that favored the Christians in a 6 to 5 ratio. In the 1970s, the demographics changed in Lebanon, and the Maronites made up around one-third of the population, with two-thirds of the population being Muslims. When the Muslims called for more constitutional power to reflect the population change, the Christians refused. To complicate matters, the influx of Palestinians into Lebanon following the events of Black September in Jordan in 1970 served to exacerbate Maronite fears of an Arab-Muslim takeover. The National Front, the umbrella organization representing left-wing organizations and Muslim groups, endorsed the Palestinian cause and used the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to pressure the Maronite-oriented right-wing groups. The confessional government receded into a state of paralysis that undermined public confidence. This resulted in the formation of militias on both sides: Christians aiming to keep the status quo and Muslims and leftists fighting for change. On April 13, 1975, the date marking the beginning of the Lebanese civil war, unidentified gunmen fired on a church in Ain El Rimmaneh, a Christian suburb of Beirut, killing four people, including two men from the Phalange militia, a Maronite armed group. The Phalange accused the Palestinians, and later that day, the Phalange massacred 26 Palestinians traveling on a bus in Ain El Rimmaneh. The incident sparked full-scale hostilities between the Lebanese Front militias and National Movement. Between April 1975 and October 1976, when the Arab summits in Riyadh and Cairo dispatched the Arab Deterrent Force, Lebanon broke down into its sectarian parts. As the Lebanese army disintegrated, Christian militias massacred Palestinian inhabitants of Debayeh, Karantina, and Tel El Zaatar, and the Palestinians massacred Christians in Damour. The Lebanese president Sleiman Franjieh then asked the Syrian army to intervene. In 1978, under the pretext of increased PLO attacks from Lebanon, the Israeli army invaded southern Lebanon but withdrew the same year, creating a security zone controlled by proxy through the
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South Lebanon Army (SLA). Meanwhile, alarmed by the hostilities in southern Lebanon, the United Nations (un) created the UN Interim Force in Lebanon. In 1982 Israel reinvaded Lebanon; this time its troops reached Beirut and laid siege to the city. Through international mediation, the PLO left Beirut, and the pro-Israeli Bashir Gemayel was elected president. After Gemayel’s assassination in September 1982, under the watch of the Israeli troops, Gemayel’s supporters entered the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila and massacred around 1,500 Palestinian civilians. After the massacre, the American-French-Italian Multinational Force (MNF), which had overseen the PLO evacuation, returned to Beirut. In 1983, as the IDF unilaterally withdrew to southern Lebanon, French, U.S. military headquarters, and the U.S. embassy in Beirut were bombed. The first “reconciliation” conference held in Switzerland failed. Hostilities between the Lebanese factions escalated, and the MNF left Beirut. Lebanon descended into chaos as various groups battled for dominance, radical Shi’i groups kidnapped Western nationals, and the Shi’i Amal movement laid siege to the Palestinian refugee camps.
In 1988 the term of Lebanese president Amin Gemayel (Bashir’s brother) expired without the parliament electing a new president. In East Beirut, Gemayel assigned the commander of the army, General Michel Aoun, as the head of an anti-Syrian caretaker military government. In West Beirut, Syria set up a rival government. General Aoun declared war on Syria and Syrian troops, with the help of their Lebanese allies, and laid siege to East Beirut. In November 1989 the Lebanese parliament met in Taif, Saudi Arabia, and agreed on a formula to end the war. General Aoun rejected the Taif Agreement and the election of President René Moawad and claimed the authority of the prime minister, issuing a decree dissolving the parliament. In November President Moawad was assassinated, and President Elias Hrawi was elected. Early in 1990 the Lebanese parliament approved the constitutional amendments that embodied the political reforms of the Taif Agreement. In 1991, the year that the fighting ended, the Lebanese government gained legitimacy and approval from most Lebanese; it then ordered the disarmament and dissolution of militias and the release of the Western hostages taken during the 1980s. The fragile peace continued to hold during the following decade.
Lebanon was the site of years of civil war and external invasions, creating turmoil in an already troubled part of the world. Above: U.S. Marines prepare to leave at the conclusion of a multinational peacekeeping operation in the mid-1980s.
Liberal Democratic Party (Japan) See also Arab-Israeli War (1982).
Further reading: Fisk, Robert. Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon. New York: Atheneum, 1990; Harris, William W. Faces of Lebanon: Sects, Wars and Global Extensions. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1996. Ramzi Abou Zeineddine
Liberal Democratic Party (Japan) The dominant political party in Japan from 1955 to 1993 was the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). It began in 1955 with the merging of Shigeru Yoshida’s Liberal Party and Ichiro Hatoyama’s Japan Democratic Party, because both shared a common opposition to the Japan Socialist Party. However the roots of the LDP date to the late 19th–20th century. Two Japanese political figures, Itagaki Taisuke and Saigo Takamori, played roles in the emergence of the modern LDP. Japanese political development before the occupation by the United States after World War II can best be viewed in broad cycles. Modern Japanese history begins with the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Facing a continued challenge from the West to modernize and change their isolationist policies, Japanese feudal lords, samurai, and others overthrew the Tokugawa Shogunate that had ruled from 1603 to 1867. The result was a complete alteration of the Japanese system in order to compete with the West. Japan then changed many of its old political, economic, and social institutions to conform with Western-style examples. From the Meiji Restoration came a series of cycles in Japanese political history that would continue until after World War II. First came the Freedom and People’s Rights Era, with its associated demands for more liberalization, which lasted from 1878 to 1889. Japan then underwent a militarist period from 1894 to 1905 that was characterized by wars with both China and Russia. Afterward, a cycle of liberalization known as the Taisho Democracy dominated the politics from 1912 to 1915 and again from 1918 to 1930. An age of militarism, again marked by international aggression, dominated the politics of Japan from 1931 to 1945. The beginnings of the Liberal Democratic Party can be traced to the Freedom and People’s Rights Era. Itagaki Taisuke claimed a powerful role in late 19thcentury Japan. He used his position to advocate peace instead of rebellion in order for the Japanese people to
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gain a voice in government. In 1874 Itagaki and his supporters penned the Tosa Memorial, a criticism of the seemingly unchecked power of the oligarchy and a call for representative government. By 1878 Itagaki had become impatient at the lack of reform and moved to create the Aikokusha, the Society of Patriots, in order to achieve representative government. In 1877 the Satsuma rebellion pitted the samurai led by Saigo Takamori against the citizen-based Meiji army. The Meiji victory solidified its position over the samurai. By 1881 Itagaki founded the Jiyuto, the Liberal Party, which favored the adoption of French styles of political representation. At the same time, Okuma Shigenobu emerged as a voice in favor of the British model of representative government. Okuma founded the Rikken Kaishinto, the Constitutional Progressive Party, in 1882. The two opposition parties led to a pro-government party called the Rikken Teiseito, or the Imperial Rule Party, in 1882. A number of violent and nonviolent demonstrations among the political parties soon led to government suppression and restrictions on political activism. Restrictions on the political parties led to fighting within the parties as well as with others. The Jiyuto, which had fought against the Kaishinto, fell apart in 1884. Okuma also resigned his leadership of the Kaishinto party. A call for more democratic governance, through the movement for Freedom and People’s Rights, added to growing demands for a more politically liberal Japanese system of governance. By 1889 popular demand led to the enactment of the Meiji constitution. Modeled after that of Prussia, the constitution resulted in a limited democracy. A representative body, the Diet, of directly elected members came into being. Ultimately, the government was run by bureaucrats much like its Prussian example. By 1890 the call for more direct representation resulted in the first national election. Both the Jiyuto and Kaishinto reorganized for the elections and combined to win over half of the seats in the House of Representatives. The first two decades of the 20th century brought the transformation of the Freedom and People’s Rights into the Liberal Party and later the Seiyukai. The era of political parties, however, gave way to the militarist period of 1931 to 1945. After the war the modern Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) emerged as the result of a merger between the Liberal Party and the Democratic Party. The LDP reflected a broad coalition of those calling for military protection by the United States and the economic rebuilding of the war-torn infrastructure under a capitalist system. The first postwar government
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was LDP-created, and the party would dominate until the 1990s. Further reading: Beasley, W. G. The Modern History of Japan. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981; Richardson, Bradley M., and Scott C. Flanagan. Politics in Japan. Boston: Little, Brown, 1984; Tsurumi, Kazuko. Social Change and the Individual: Japan Before and After Defeat in WWII. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970; Ward, Robert E., ed. Political Development in Modern Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968. Matthew H. Wahlert
Liberian civil wars (1989–1996 and 1999–2003) The small West African state of Liberia has suffered almost constant civil war since the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), led by Charles Taylor, launched an uprising against the Liberian government in December 1989. The civil war quickly became a chaotic conflict with seven distinct factions contesting control of the nation. All of the groups fought for possession of Liberia’s natural resources: iron ore, exotic timber, rubber, and especially diamonds. The resources were used to fund war efforts as the nation’s economy collapsed, and because it had little global strategic importance, aid from major world powers was not forthcoming. An attempt was made by the Nigerian-dominated Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and ECOWAS Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) to mediate and end the violence between 1990 and 1992 through peacekeeping and helping to hold new elections. Charles Taylor’s forces attacked the interim government, derailing the process. A new coalition government was formed by Charles Taylor’s enemies in 1993 but fighting continued as the coalition tried to form a democratic government. In early 1996 Taylor’s forces attacked the capital, Monrovia, destroying much of the city in prolonged fighting. All sides then came together to negotiate and agreed on disarmament and demobilization of their forces. Elections were held in July 1997, and Charles Taylor won using the campaign slogan “He killed my Ma, he killed my Pa, but I’ll vote for him.” Many Liberians simply wanted the war to end and believed that Taylor would continue to fight if he was not elected. Peace returned to Liberia, but Taylor cracked down on his former enemies. A coalition of Taylor opponents formed the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD)
army in 1999. The LURD invaded Lofa County to gain control of the diamond fields. LURD forces pushed south from northern Liberia toward the capital and captured two-thirds of the country by 2003 before laying siege to Monrovia. During the course of the Liberian civil war, a rebel group in neighboring Sierra Leone, known as the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and led by Foday Sankoh, was sponsored by Charles Taylor. Fighting lasted from 1991 to 2002. Taylor used the RUF as a way to destabilize Sierra Leone, which was serving as the base for the ECOMOG peacekeepers who were trying to stop Taylor from winning control of Liberia. The RUF began their terror campaign in 1991, brutally punishing all who were not part of the RUF. They were exceptionally harsh toward civilians whom they accused of supporting the Sierra Leone government. Mass murder, systematic rape, and widespread amputation of hands, arms, and feet were the tools that the RUF used to control the population. Hands were chopped off to prevent voting, which required a thumb for fingerprinting. To fill their ranks, the RUF also practiced widespread abduction of children. Boys starting as young as nine years old were forced to fight, often under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Girls were used as servants and sex slaves. Like Taylor in Liberia, the RUF targeted the resources of Sierra Leone to fund their war effort. During the course of the struggle against the RUF, several national governments existed, led by military juntas or civilians. Several attempts were made by ECOMOG at mediation, and talks were held to form coalition governments, but the RUF always broke agreements and returned to fighting. Between 2000 and 2002 the RUF was defeated by attacks from government forces, ECOMOG, and Guinean troops. In May 2002 elections were held, and the RUF won no seats in parliament. Over the next three years the fighting subsided and the peacekeepers left. During both of the conflicts, the United Nations (UN) was absent despite evidence of ethnic cleansing. In August 2003 President Charles Taylor resigned and fled to Nigeria. In the summer of 2006 Taylor was captured and sent to the Hague to be tried for war crimes. Foday Sankoh was arrested in 2000 after his soldiers fired on protesters. Foday Sankoh had stopped fighting after signing the Lome Peace Accord in 1999. He was held in UN custody and died from a stroke while awaiting trial for war crimes. The legacy of more than a decade of constant fighting has been continuing misery for the peoples of Liberia and Sierra Leone. Both countries have many thousands
Lin Biao
of amputees who are unable to care for themselves; education has broken down; a whole generation suffers from posttraumatic stress disorder; the economy is ruined; the infrastructure is in shambles; and both nations rank at the bottom of the Human Development Index according to the United Nations.
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In 1951 Libya became a unified nation under the monarchy of King Idris. At the time Libya was one of the poorest countries in the world, and Idris relied heavily on Western assistance. He also retained considerable executive power and drew support from tribal leaders, traditional politicians, and a few successful businessmen. This narrow power base alienated many, who grew increasingly disaffected with the old regime. Idris continued to rule Libya until he was overthrown in 1969 by Muammar Qaddafi.
Further reading: Adebajo, Adekeye. Liberia’s Civil War: Nigeria, ECOMOG, and Regional Security in West Africa. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002; Ellis, Stephen. The Mask of Anarchy: The Destruction of Liberia and the Religious Dimension of an African War. New York: NYU Press, 1999; Gberie, Lansana. A Dirty War in West Africa: The RUF and the Destruction of Sierra Leone. London: Hurst, 2005; Huband, Mark. The Liberian Civil War. Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1998.
Further reading: First, Ruth. Libya: The Elusive Revolution. New York: Africana, 1975; Sabki, Hisham M. The United Nations and the Pacific Settlement of Disputes: A Case Study of Libya. Beirut: Dar El-Mashreq Publishers, 1970.
Collin Boyd
Hisham M. Sabki
Libya
Lin Biao (Lin Piao)
Following the defeat of the Libyan forces led by Omar Mukhtar in the 1930s, Italy consolidated its imperial control over the three main provinces of Libya: Cyrenaica, Tripolitania, and Fezzan. During World War II Libya became a battleground between the Axis forces and the Allied forces of France and Great Britain. By 1942 the Italians had been defeated, the British occupied Tripolitania and Cyrenaica; and the French occupied Fezzan. In Tripolitania the British retained direct control, but in Cyrenaica they granted greater autonomy; the French administered Fezzan through direct military control. After the war a number of different solutions were offered regarding the future of the Libyan territories. Italy demanded the return of Libya to its jurisdiction. Other Western nations suggested a trusteeship, while some advocated independence. Egypt, Libya’s neighbor to the east, was interested in acquiring control over the territory. Competing Libyan political forces also had conflicting goals. Some wanted the continuation of Sayyid Idris’s Sanussi leadership, while a political society of young educated Libyans like Mukhtar pushed for unity and complete independence. When the powers failed to agree, the matter was turned over to the newly formed United Nations (UN). After protracted negotiations the UN General Assembly recommended in 1949 that Libya—comprising Cyrenaica, Tripolitania, and Fezzan—should constitute a unified state that should obtain independence no later than January 1, 1952. Thus for the first time in its history, the General Assembly acted as a world legislator with binding authority.
Although his contributions to the development of modern Communist China are overshadowed by those of Chairman Mao Tse-tung, the leader of both the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the country, Lin Biao nevertheless played an important role. Lin Biao was born in Wuhan, China, in 1908. The son of a landowner, he joined the Socialist Youth League in 1926. Attending the Whampoa Military Academy he met another future communist leader, Zhou Enlai. After the collapse of the Qing (Ch’ing) dynasty in China in 1911, much of China countryside was ruled by warlords. During the 1920s there was a push to reunify the country. Two of the main groups were the new CCP, formed in 1921, and the Kuomintang (KMT), the Nationalist Party. The emerging leader in the KMT was Chiang Kai-shek. Lin Biao managed to survive the purges, and, along with Mao and the remaining communists, escaped into China’s interior. He participated in the Long March; 30,000 survived out of 100,000 who had begun the trek. They included leader Mao, Liu Shaoqi, and Zhou Enlai. When the Japanese invaded China in 1937, Lin Biao utilized guerrilla tactics to fight the invaders behind enemy lines, something that gave the CCP patriotic prestige. At the end of World War II, war broke out again between the CCP and the KMT. The CCP created the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), in which Lin Biao served as a commander. On October 1, 1949, Mao proclaimed the creation of the People’s Republic
(1908–1971) Chinese communist general
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of China (PRC). Lin continued to play a major role in both the government and the military and commanded “volunteers” from China in the Korean War (1950– 53); he was promoted to the rank of marshal. In 1968 Mao embarked on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to attack his critics and regain control of the party. Mao set out to eliminate his competition. Lin Biao worked closely with Mao and fought against the faction led by Liu Shaoqi, who had been state chairman since 1999. Lin was also instrumental in assembling Mao’s writings into the Quotations of Chairman Mao, or the“Little Red Book,” which received nationwide distribution. Lin’s power rose when Red Guards, Mao’s young supporters, began to fight one another adding chaos that grew into anarchy. The minister of defense was called by Mao to meet the enemy to suppress the Red Crossein 1967. For this he was annointed vice chairman of the CCP and Mao’s successor at the 9th Party Congress in 1969. However, Mao became increasingly suspicious of him as the Lin’s power grew. Conversely Lin’s impatience to replace Mao culminated in a failed assassination attempt in 1971. Lin and his wife attempted to flee to the Soviet Union, but the plane that their air force officer son piloted crashed in Outer Mongolia, and all were killed. Lin’s rise and fall demonstrate the murderously unstable politics in Maoist China. See also Gang of Four and Jiang Qing. Further reading: Fairbank, John King. China: A New History. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1992; ————. The Great Chinese Revolution, 1800–1985. New York: Perennial Library, 1987; Jin, Qiu. The Culture of Power: The Lin Biao Incident in the Cultural Revolution. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999; Li, Zhisui. The Private Life of Chairman Mao. New York: Random House, 1994; Wu, Tien-wei. Lin Biao and the Gang of Four. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983. Mitchell Newton-Matza
literature Since 1950, vast numbers of new books have been published, and many from before 1950 have been republished as new editions, facsimiles of old editions, and, in recent years, as digital books. From the 1970s, there was also the emergence of what became known
as “airport fiction,” describing books that were sold to air travelers with plenty of time to occupy. Digital books in particular have allowed access to many old and formerly out-of-print books and offer computersearchable functions giving readers and scholars the ability to find information more quickly. While this has allowed easier access to reference works, the vast majority of works of fiction continue to be published in book form. While many writers have other means of income, some have become very successful through their book sales, with British writer J. K. Rowling, the creator of Harry Potter, becoming the first writer to make more than $1 billion from sales of her books. british writers British writers have dominated much of the Englishspeaking world, with Bertrand Russell winning the Nobel Prize in literature in 1950, Sir Winston Churchill winning in 1953, William Golding—author of Lord of the Flies—winning in 1983, V. S. Naipaul in 2001, and Harold Pinter in 2005. Since 1950, other important British novelists include Richard Adams, author of Watership Down; Kingsley Amis, author of Lucky Jim; Martin Amis; Julian Barnes; H. E. Bates; Malcolm Bradbury, author of The History Man; John Braine, author of Room at the Top; Anita Brookner, author of Hotel du Lac; Anthony Burgess, author of Clockwork Orange; postfeminist writer Angela Carter; Norman Collins; Margaret Drabble; Daphne du Maurier; novelist and poet Lawrence Durrell, author of the Alexandria Quartet, and his younger brother naturalist and zoologist Gerald Durrell, author of My Family and Other Animals; John Fowles, author of The French Lieutenant’s Woman; Graham Greene; L. P. Hartley, author of The Go-Between; Laurie Lee, author of Cider with Rosie; Malcoln Lavry, author of Under the Volcano; Jessica Mitford, author of Hons and Rebels; John Mortimer, creator of Rumpole of the Bailey; Iris Murdoch, author of The Sea, The Sea, the 1978 winner of the Booker Prize; Anthony Powell, author of A Dance to the Music of Time; V. S. Pritchett, author of The Spanish Temper; Dame Edith Sitwell; Sir Osbert Sitwell; and C. P. Snow. There were also a number whose major literary work was in the first half of the 20th century who also produced more works in the second half, including W. H. Auden; Robert Graves, author of I, Claudius; Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World; W. Somerset Maugham; J. B. Priestley; Welsh-born novelist Howard Spring; Dylan Thomas, author of Under Milk Wood; and P. G. Wodehouse, creator of Jeeves.
There have been many writers of historical fiction, including a number who set their books during the Napoleonic Wars: Bernard Cornwell (pseudonym for Bernard Wiggins), creator of Sharpe; C. S. Forester (pseudonym for Cecil Louis Troughton Smith), creator of Horatio Hornblower; Alexander Kent (pseudonym for Douglas Reeman), creator of Richard Bolitho; Patrick O’Brian (pseudonym for Richard Patrick Russ), creator of the Aubrey-Maturin series; and Northcote Parkinson, creator of Richard DeLancey. Other writers of historical novels include: Charlotte Bingham; Catherine Cookson; George Macdonald Fraser, who resurrected Flashman from Tom Brown’s Schooldays for the “Flashman Papers”; Robert Harris; and Jean Plaidy (pseudonym for Eleanor Hibbert). Colonial and postcolonial themes have been explored by writers Joy Adamson, author of Born Free; Rumer Godden; Elspeth Huxley, author of The Flame Trees of Thika; Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, author Heat and Dust, the 1975 winner of the Booker Prize; M. M. Kaye, author of The Far Pavilions; Richard Mason, author of The World of Suzie Wong; John Masters, author of Bhowani Junction; R. K. Narayan, author of Vendor of Sweets; Paul Scott, author of “The Raj Quartet”; and Leslie Thomas, author of The Virgin Soldiers. James Clavell, author of Shogun, covered Asian historical topics. Romance novelists include Barbara Cartland, author of 723 titles; Anne Baker; Barbara Taylor Bradford; Jackie Collins; Lena Kennedy; Anne Mather, author of over 150 novels; Betty Neels, author of over 130 titles. The publishers Mills and Boon print thousands of romance titles, many written to a formula. Popular thriller writers include Eric Ambler; former politician Jeffrey Archer; Desmond Bagley; Len Deighton; Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond; Ken Follett; Frederick Forsyth, author of The Day of the Jackal; John le Carré (pseudonym for David Cornwell), creator of George Smiley; Alastair Maclean; and Douglas Reeman. War stories by Paul Brickhill; Nicholas Monsarrat (pseudonym for John Turney), author of The Cruel Sea; and Eric Williams, author of The Wooden Horse and The Tunnel have also sold well. Crime writers include Edward Aarons, author of the “Assignment” books; Margery Allingham; Agatha Christie; John Creasey; P. D. James (pseudonym for Phyllis White); and Ruth Rendell; and there have also been others who have set their stories during particular historical events such as Ellis Peters (pseudonym for Edith Pargeter), creator of Cadfael in medieval Shropshire; and H. R. F. Keating, who set his Inspector Ghote novels in British India. Mention should also be made of Josephine Tey whose novel The
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Daughter of Time changed the way many people have viewed Richard III. Playwrights include Arnold Wesker, who wrote Chicken Soup with Barley, and Terence Rattigan, author of Separate Tables. Poets include T. S. Eliot, who won the Nobel Prize in 1948, and D. J. Enright, author of The Laughing Hyena. Fantasy writers such as C. S. Lewis, creator of Narnia; Mervyn Peake; Terry Pratchett; and J. R. R. Tolkein, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, have all been very popular. In science fiction, Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; J. G. Ballard, who became famous for his semi-autobiographical The Empire of the Sun rather than his science fiction; Arthur C. Clarke, author of 2001: A Space Odyssey; and John Wyndham have all been popular, with their books published in many languages. Children’s story writers include Enid Blyton, creator of Noddy; Anthony Buckeridge, creator of Jennings; Richmal Crompton, author of Just Williams; and the historical fiction of Cynthia Harnett, Rosemary Sutcliff, Geoffrey Trease, and Ronald Welch (pseudonym for Ronald Felton). The most famous playwrights include Harold Pinter, the Nobel laureate; John Osborne, author of Look Back in Anger; Dennis Potter, author of Son of Man; Tom Stoppard. Poets include John Betjeman, Ted Hughes, and Philip Larkin. Historians include Alan Bullock, E. H. Carr, Leonard Cottrell, Antonia Fraser, Christopher Hibbert, Christopher Hill, James/Jan Morris, John Prebble, and Hugh Trevor-Roper. There have also been a range of accounts of adventure, including Sir John Hunt’s The Ascent of Everest; Colonel P. H. Fawcett’s Exploration Fawcett; A Dragon Apparent by Norman Lewis; Patrick Leigh Fermor’s The Travellers Tree, and similar books. Mention should also be made of Cornish writers A. L Rowse and Derek Tangye. Travel writers include H. V. Morton; Eric Newby, author of A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush; and Freya Stark, author of Beyond the Euphrates and other books about the Middle East. american writers There have also been many prominent U.S. writers in this era, including four who won the Nobel Prize in literature: Ernest Hemingway in 1954, John Steinbeck in 1962, Canadian-born Saul Bellow in 1976, and Toni Morrison in 1993. Others include James Baldwin, author of Another Country; Paul Bowles, who moved to Tangier, Morocco, in 1952; Allen Drury, author of Advise and Consent; Alex Haley, author of Roots; Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961; Mary McCarthy, author of
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Hanoi; Norman Mailer, author of Armies of the Night; James Michener; Chaim Potok; J. D. Salinger, author of The Catcher in the Rye; John Updike, author of Rabbit, Run and The Witches of Eastwick; Gore Vidal, author of Myra Breckenridge and historical novels; and Richard Wright, author of The Outsider. In recent years the writer who has achieved the largest number of sales has been Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code. Cowboy books have always been popular. Historical novelists include Steven Saylor, author of the Roma SubRosa novels featuring Gordianus “the finder;” and surgeon and novelist Frank Slaughter. War stories include those by Irwin Shaw, author of The Young Lions; and Herman Wouk, author of The Caine Mutiny, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1952. Crime writers such as Truman Capote, author of In Cold Blood; Patricia Highsmith; and Mario Puzo, author of The Godfather have also sold many copies of their books. Science fiction writers such as Isaac Asimov, fantasy writers such as Ursula Le Guin, and horror writers such as Stephen King have sold well. There have been many popular writers such as V. C. Andrews; Clive Cussler; John Grisham; Thomas Harris; Robert Ludlum, author of The Bourne Identity; satirist P. J. O’Rourke; Danielle Steel; and Kathleen Windsor, author of Forever Amber. Playwrights include Arthur Miller, author of The Crucible; Eugene O’Neill, whose Long Day’s Journey into Night was published posthumously in 1956; Thornton Wilder who started writing in the 1920s but whose plays included The Matchmaker; and Tennessee Williams whose most famous works such as A Streetcar Named Desire were written in the 1940s, and who won the 1955 Pulitzer Prize with Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Mention should also be made of Edward Albee, author of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, his first full-length play. There have also been many important nonfiction writers, including Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring (1963); political commentator Noam Chomsky; economist and Professor J. K. Galbraith; and John Gunther, author of the “Inside” books. American poets include Robert Lowell, Ogden Nash, and Sylvia Plath. other authors in english Elsewhere in the English-speaking world, there have been many other Nobel laureates, including Samuel Beckett from Ireland, in 1969, author of Waiting for Godot; Patrick White from Australia, in 1973; Wole Soyinka from Nigeria, in 1986; Nadine Gordimer from South Africa, in 1991 (and the Booker Prize in 1974); Derek Walcott from St. Lucia, in 1992; Seamus Heaney
from Ireland, in 1995; and J. M. Coetzee, author of The Life and Times of Michael K, from South Africa, in 2003. Prolific South African writer Bryce Courtney, author of The Power of One, moved to Australia. Irish writers include Brendan Behan, author of Borstal Boy; James Donleavy, author of The Ginger Man; Frank McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes; and William Trevor, author of The Old Boys. Australian writers include Thea Astley; Peter Carey; Albert Facey; feminist Germaine Greer; Xavier Herbert, author of Poor Fellow My Country; George Johnston, author of My Brother Jack; Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler’s Ark; Colleen McCullough, author of The Thorn Birds; David Malouf, author of Fly Away Peter; Alan Moorehead, author of The White Nile; poet Les Murray; Neville Shute (pseudonym for Nevil Shute Norway); Christina Stead; Arthur Upfield, creator of the aboriginal detective “Bonaparte”; and Morris West, author of The Devil’s Advocate and The Ambassador. New Zealand writers include Janet Frame, author of Owls Do Cry, crime writer Ngaio Marsh, and Alan Duff, author of Once Were Warriors. The writer most strongly identified with South Africa is Wilbur Smith, who set most of his books in South Africa and Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. Other South African authors include Stuart Cloete, author of Rags of Glory, and Alan Paton, author of Cry, The Beloved Country. There have also been many Canadian authors, perhaps the most famous from this period being novelist Margaret Atwood and Thomas Costain. european and south american writers French writers since 1950 include Nobel laureates François Mauriac (1952), Algerian-French writer and philosopher Albert Camus (1957), diplomat and poet Saint-John Perse (1960), Jean-Paul Sartre (1964; he declined the prize), and Claude Simon (1985). Other famous writers of this period include writer and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir; structural anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, author of Anthropologie structurale; André Malraux; historical novelist Zoë Oldenburg; and Jean Tardieu. Belgian writer Georges Simenon created Inspector Maigret and wrote over 500 books; and Frenchman Gerard de Villiers wrote the best-selling “S.A.S.” murder mysteries set in various countries around the world. Writers in Germany who won the Nobel Prize in literature include GermanSwedish writer Nelly Sachs, in 1966; Heinrich Böll, in 1972; Günter Grass for The Tin Drum, in 1999; and Austrian feminist playwright and novelist Elfriede Jelinek, in 2004. Mention should also be made of Bul-
garian-born novelist Elias Canetti, who won the prize in 1981 for his writing in German. The Italian Nobel laureates were lyrical poet Salvatore Quasimodo, in 1959; poet and writer Eugenio Montale, in 1975; and playwright and theater director Dario Fo, in 1997. Possibly the best-known Italian writers are Giuseppe di Lampedusa, who wrote The Leopard, which he completed just before his death, the book being published posthumously; Lois de Bernières, author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin; and Alberto Moravia, author of Women of Rome and Roman Tales. A number of writers in Spanish won the Nobel Prize in literature: Juan Ramón Jiménez, in 1956, Vicente Aleixandre, in 1977, and Camilo José Cela, in 1989. Salvador de Madariaga wrote many books on Spain and the Spanish-speaking world, most of which were translated into English. The others were the Guatemalan Miguel Ángel Asturias, in 1967; Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (pen name for Ricardo Elicer Neftali Reyes Basoalto), in 1971; the Colombian Gabriel García Márquez, author of One Hundred Years of Solitude, in 1982; and the Mexican Octavio Paz, in 1990. From Portugal, José Saramago won the Nobel Prize in 1998, and in recent years there has been extensive literature about Portuguese Africa. Portuguese-language poets include the Angolan nationalist and later president Agostinho Neto; there have also been many books by Brazilian lyricist Paulo Coelho. From the Soviet Union, Boris Pasternak, author of Doctor Zhivago, was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1958 but declined it. Other Russians who became Nobel laureates include novelist Mikhail Sholokhov (1965), dissident novelist and dramatist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1970), and Joseph Brodsky (1987). Mention should also be made of Russian-born writer Vladimir Nabokov. From Eastern Europe, Jewish-Hungarian writer and concentration camp survivor Imre Kertész won the Nobel Prize in 2002; writer and poet Jaroslav Seifert from the Czech Republic won the prize in 1984. Polish-born American writer Isaac Bashevis Singer won the prize in 1978 for his work in Yiddish, poet Czesław Miłosz in 1980, and Wisława Szymborska in 1996. In 1961 the Yugoslav writer and diplomat Ivo Andric´ won the Nobel Prize for his Bosnian Chronicles, which covers many aspects of Bosnian history. Two Greeks became Nobel laureates: poet and diplomat Giorgos Seferis, in 1963, and modernist poet Odysseas Elytis, in 1979. From Scandinavia, Nobel laureates since 1950 include Swedes Pär Lagerkvist, in 1951, Eyvind John-
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son, and poet Harry Martinson, in 1974, and Icelandic writer Halldór Laxness, in 1955. There was also much renewed interest in the Viking sagas, many of which were translated and published in English and French during this period. the middle east and india For Middle Eastern literature, Israeli writer Shmuel Yosef Agnon was one of the joint Nobel Prize winners in 1966 for his work in Hebrew. Other important works of Israeli literature include Menachem Begin’s The Revolt, and books about Jerusalem by Teddy Kollek. Palestinian writers include American resident Edward Said and Lebanese writer Edward Atiyah, author of An Arab Tells His Story and Lebanon Paradise. North African writers include Naguib Mahfouz from Egypt who won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1988; Gamal al-Ghitani from Cairo has written many books, including Zayni Barakat about the Mamluks in Egypt; and Algerian writer Albert Memmi wrote The Pillar of Salt. There have also been many prominent Turkish writers, including Yashar Kemal, author of Memed, My Hawk; Irgan Orga, who did much to explain Turkish history and culture to English-language readers; and postmodernist writer Orhan Pamuk, who won the Nobel Prize in 2006. Most African books tend to have been written in English, French, or other European languages, but the author of what has been described as the most quintessentially African story is Camara Laye, from French Guinea, author of The Dark Child, or The African Child. In India, there have also been large numbers of writers who have written in English, including Dom Moraes; India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who wrote The Discovery of India; and Salman Rushdie, author of the controversial Midnight’s Children and the even more controversial The Satanic Verses. asian writers Mao Zedong, the leader of China from 1949 until his death in 1976, wrote poetry, but is best known as a writer for his “Little Red Book,” for which 900 million copies were issued in Chinese, and in other languages, including Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Spanish, and Vietnamese. It was first published in April 1964, and its red plastic cover made it well known around the world. Many other Communist Party publications, such as the Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, also had millions of copies printed. To help promote new literary works
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published in China, the monthly journal Chinese Literature was published from 1951. Of the other Chinese writers since 1950, perhaps the best-known is Han Suyin, whose five-volume autobiographical saga began with The Crippled Tree and whose A Many Splendoured Thing became a best seller around the world. In more recent times, Jung Chang wrote Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, describing the family’s life during the Cultural Revolution. Mention should also be made of the prolific writer and academic Lin Yutang and de Lucy Ching, author of One of the Lucky Ones. Xingjian Gao, who wrote about the Tiananmen Square protests, was declared a persona non grata in China; he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2000. Two Japanese writers won the Nobel Prize in literature: Kawabata Yasunari in 1968, and Oe Kenzaburo in 1994. However, the most famous Japanese writers of this period were undoubtedly Abe Kobo and Mishima Yukio. Many Korean works have been translated into English and published by Heinemann Asia, but apart from translations of Lady Hong’s Memoirs of a Korean Queen, few Korean books have managed to achieve much literary interest outside Korea. The works of North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il have been published in many different editions and several languages, by the Foreign Languages Press in Pyongyang. For mainland Southeast Asia, there have been many books published in Burmese, Khmer, Thai, and Vietnamese, and even a number being published in Lao. After independence, there have been many books published in Burmese, including many items on Burmese history. With the import of books now restricted, this has helped the Burmese publishing industry and local literature. Prior to 1970, there were a number of novels published in Khmer, with a massive increase in the Khmer-language publishing industry from 1970 to 1975, including the work of Long Boret, prime minister from 1973 to 1975. Similarly Vietnamese literature has followed political trends, with many books published in South Vietnam until 1975, and then few works of literature published in Vietnam until the 1990s. In Thailand, the prosperity of the country has ensured a regular number of books in Thai being published. After Malaya became independent, the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka in Kuala Lumpur encouraged writing in Malay, which has flourished. In neighboring Singapore, there have been many books published, a large number being historical works covering aspects of Singapore’s history, but also many nostal-
gic novels about the country’s colonial past and a number of stories set in modern Singapore. Further Reading: Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, eds. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English. London: B. T. Batsford, 1990; Drabble, Margaret. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987; Pynsent, R. B., and S. Kanikova, eds. The Everyman Companion to East European Literature. London: J.M. Dent, 1993; Stringer, Jenny, ed. The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Literature in English. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996; Welch, Robert, ed. The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Justin Corfield
Li Zongren (Li Tsung-jen)
(1891–1969) Chinese general and politician Li Zongren (Li Tsung-jen) was an important military and political leader of Guangxi (Kwangsi) Province, along with Bai Chongxi (Pai Chung-hsi), between 1925 and 1949. He joined the Kuomintang (KMT, or Nationalist Party), founded by Sun Yat-sen, and commanded the Seventh Army; it played an important part in the Northern Expedition (1926–28) that brought the Koumintang to power. Li distinguished himself as a skilled military commander in the Northern Expedition and the Sino-Japanese War, where he commanded the Nationalist troops in an important victory in 1938 at Taierzhuang in Shandong (Shantung) Province. Li and Bai, however, represented the Warlord Era, joining the KMT in part to preserve and expand their regional power by controlling their army as distinct units that often disobeyed the central government. Their group is called the “Guangxi clique” and fought against the central government in Nanjing (Nanking) between 1929 and 1930. They also allowed the fleeing Chinese Communists to pass of through Guangxi during the Long March. When the National Assembly convened in Nanjing in 1948 to implement the new constitution, Li was elected vice president of China (Chiang Kai-shek was president). Li became acting president when Chiang resigned in 1949. However, Chiang still retained most of his power and the loyalty of key army commanders, and when Li failed to negotiate a settlement with the CCP in the civil war, Chiang abruptly resigned, and Bai chose to flee to Taiwan.
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After Li’s departure for New York, Chiang resumed the presidency in Taiwan. Li refused to join the Nationalists on Taiwan and was impeached in absentia. The United States became an outspoken critic of Chiang’s rule. Li remained in the United States until 1966, when he returned to mainland China and voiced support of the Communist government. He died shortly afterward. Further reading: Chen, Lifu. The Storm Clouds Clear over China: The Memoir of Ch’en Li-fu, 1900–1993. Sidney H. Chang and Ramon H. Meyers, eds. and comps. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1994; Hutchings, Graham. Modern China: A Guide to a Century of Change. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001; Tong, Te-kong, and Li TsungJen. The Memoirs of Li Tsung-Jen. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1979.
Patrice Lumumba (center) became the first prime minister of the independent Republic of the Congo in May 1960.
Sarah Boslaugh
Lumumba, Patrice
(1925–1961) Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba was the first prime minister of the independent Republic of the Congo. Born in Kasai Province in the eastern Congo, he came from a small tribe or ethnic group—the Batatele. This background was to handicap him in future dealings with rivals who came from major tribal groupings. Lumumba was born July 2, 1925. Educated by Protestant missionaries, he entered the postal service and became a contributor to the nascent Congolese press. He also became active in trade union activities, and by 1955 was president of a regional labor union. Convicted of post office embezzlement, Lumumba, after his release from prison in 1957, went on to forge a nationwide political party, the Congolese Nationalist Movement, in October 1958. After attending an All-African Peoples’ Conference in newly independent Ghana in December 1958, Lumumba became a militant nationalist. In 1959 he joined other nationalist leaders in opposing the Belgian plan for gradual independence in five years. The Belgians were forced to promise independence by June 30, 1960. Elections held in May 1960 gave Lumumba’s party the largest number of votes, and he was offered the position of prime minister. At that time he began to talk about economic and social changes. Because some of the rhetoric sounded socialist, many in the West feared that the anticolo-
nialist tone in his speeches meant an alliance with the Soviet Union. After he formed an independent government, on June 23, 1960, Lumumba faced disorder seven days later. Army units rebelled, the province of Katanga seceded, and Belgium sent in troops. Lumumba called upon the United Nations (un) to restore order; however, it did not intervene. He then turned to the Soviet Union for planes to transport his troops. He also asked independent African states to support him. These steps were ineffective and caused his internal allies to turn away from him. On September 5 the president of the Congo, Joseph Kasavubu, who had advocated a more moderate course and favored some form of autonomy, declared Lumumba deposed. On September 14 the army head, Joseph Mobutu, seized power with the approval of Kasavubu. Mobuto and Kasavubu soon reached an accommodation with the UN, which recognized the government in October 1960. Now powerless, Lumumba sought to travel to Stanleyville (now Kisangani) in northeast Congo, where he still had support. On his way there, however, he was intercepted by soldiers of Joseph Mobuto. After an imprisonment of three months, Mobuto turned Lumumba over to Moïse Tshombe, the head of secessionist Katanga Province, on January 17, 1961. Lumumba was murdered that same night. In retrospect, Lumumba’s ideas and rhetoric do not appear so radical. He supported a united Congo as opposed to its division along regional/ethnic/ tribal lines. He supported the end of colonialism and
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proclaimed neutrality in the cold war, with an emphasis on “Africanist” values. These sentiments ultimately led to his undoing. Further reading: Lumumba-Kasongo, Tukumbi. The Dynamics of Economic and Political Relationships Between Africa and
Foreign Powers: A Study in International Relations. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999; Nzongola-Ntalaja, Georges. The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People’s History. New York: Zed Books, 2002. Norman C. Rothman
M Macao (1999) Macao (or Macau) is a tiny peninsula of eight square miles located 40 miles west of Hong Kong on the southern China coast. It became a Portuguese settlement and trading center in 1557; Portugal paid the Chinese government rent for the land until 1849, after which it became a de facto Portuguese colony. By the late 20th century Macao had just under half a million people, about 96 percent Chinese, 2–3 percent Eurasians of mixed Portuguese-Chinese ancestry, and 1 percent Portuguese from Portugal. Despite long Portuguese control, few Chinese residents learned Portuguese, the official language of the colony. As a result few Chinese worked in the government. Most Eurasians, called Macanese, were bilingual; many of them worked for the government bureaucracy. The government was nonelected until 1974, when a revolution in Portugal brought in a liberal government there that enacted new laws established by a partially elected legislative assembly. The main sources of government revenue were tourism, light industry, and gambling casinos. Negotiations for the return of Macao to China began in the 1980s. However, China gave priority to its negotiations for the return of the much more important British colony of Hong Kong, and it was not until agreement had been reached for Hong Kong’s rendition that talks between Portugal and China began in earnest. Because of the asymmetry of power between China and Portugal the Chinese government imposed most of the terms of Macao’s rendition. A Joint Decla-
ration was signed in April 1987, and a Sino-Portuguese Joint Liaison Group was created in 1988 to manage the transition and prepare for the handover in 1999. As in the case of Hong Kong, Macao was given the status of a Separate Administrative Region (SAR) and assured of autonomy governing many aspects of its life for 50 years. However, China could control its foreign affairs and defense, a Chinese-appointed chief administrator would head its administration, and the Chinese People’s Congress would have final say in judicial decisions. The handover took place at the end of 1999. According to Macao Basic Law, the government of Macao consists of a Western-style partially elected legislature, with a framework of separation of power among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government, an independent judiciary, and freedom of expression and the press. Further reading: McGivering, Jill. Macao Remembers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999; Yee, Herbert S. Macau in Transition: From Colony to Autonomous Region. New York: Palsgrave, 2001. Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur
Macapagal-Arroyo, Gloria (1947– ) Philippine president
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is the daughter of former Philippine president Diosdado Macapagal. When she 275
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ascended to the presidency in January 2001, Arroyo joined the small group of female Asian leaders who had followed in their fathers’ footsteps to assume prominent political positions in their respective countries. An economist by training, Macapagal-Arroyo spent two years at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. She then returned to the Philippines, where she graduated from Assumption College in Manila in 1968 with a degree in commerce and economics. She went on to earn graduate degrees in economics from Ateneo de Manila University and the University of Philippines. In 1968 she married José Miguel Arroyo. The couple had three children. She spent her early professional life as an economics professor and held teaching positions in various institutions in the Philippines, including all three of her alma maters. Macapagal-Arroyo entered government service when she was invited by President Corazon Aquino to join the Department of Trade and Industry as assistant secretary in 1987. In 1989 she became the undersecretary. At the same time she also held the post of executive director of the Garment and Textile Export Board. Macapagal-Arroyo made her first foray into politics when she campaigned successfully for a seat in the Philippine Senate in 1992. Three years later she was overwhelmingly reelected. She drew upon her own academic training and experience to push for social and economic reform legislation. In 1998 she entered presidential politics as a vice presidential candidate, running with presidential candidate José De Venecia. While she emerged victorious with almost 13 million votes, the largest number ever earned by a presidential or vice presidential candidate, her running mate lost to the incumbent vice president, Joseph Estrada. President Estrada appointed his vice president to the cabinet as secretary of the Department of Social Welfare and Development. But the Estrada administration quickly became embroiled in a corruption scandal. Macapagal-Arroyo resigned her cabinet post and joined in the chorus calling for Estrada’s resignation. In January 2001, the Philippine Supreme Court removed Estrada from office, and Macapagal-Arroyo ascended to the presidency. As president Macapagal-Arroyo faced many challenges, not the least of which was questions about the legitimacy of the court’s action. She had to contend with demonstrations by pro-Estrada supporters in May 2001. She declared a State of Rebellion, which was lifted a few days later. Two years later she faced another challenge to her authority when junior officers and sol-
diers mutinied to push for reforms to the armed forces. The incident ended in their peaceful surrender. A more pressing problem was the Philippine economy. The Asian financial crisis, the Second Gulf War, and the mounting deficit contributed to turbulent economic times. Late in 2001 Macapagal-Arroyo announced the implementation of Holiday Economics, a policy that involved adjustments to national holidays so that Filipinos could enjoy longer weekends. The government hoped this would promote domestic tourism and in turn stimulate economic growth. The program yielded mixed results. National security issues also preoccupied Macapagal-Arroyo. In the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, MacapagalArroyo quickly pledged Filipino support for President George W. Bush’s War on Terror in the hope that her domestic problems could now be subsumed under the fight against international terrorism. After the U.S. invasion, the Philippines sent a small number of troops to Iraq to work on civic and humanitarian projects, but Macapagal-Arroyo ordered their withdrawal to free a Filipino civilian who had been taken hostage in July 2004. In 2004 Macapagal-Arroyo decided to seek another six-year term. In a four-way race, Macapagal-Arroyo emerged victorious in May 2004, but questions about legitimacy continued to dog her presidency when revelations involving her remarks to an election officer about needing a certain number of electoral votes surfaced, leading to accusations of corrupt electoral practices. Further reading: Crisostomo, Isabelo T. The Power and the Glory: Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and Her Presidency. Quezon City, Philippines: J. Kriz, 2002; Owen, Norman G., ed. The Emergence of Modern Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2005; Tyner, James A. Iraq, Terror, and the Philippines’ Will to War. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005. Soo Chun Lu
Makarios III
(1913–1977) Cypriot political leader Archbishop Makarios was born in the village of Panayia in the Paphos district of Cyprus on August 13, 1913, and died on August 3, 1977. Makarios, meaning blessed, was the name chosen by Mikhalis Khristodoulou Mouskos when he was ordained as a deacon
in 1938. After being ordained, Makarios enrolled in the theological school at the University of Athens, Greece. While studying in Athens during World War II, Makarios lived under the Nazi occupation. After the Allies liberated Greece, Makarios traveled to Boston to further his theological studies. In 1948, while in the United States, Makarios was elected bishop of Kitium, Cyprus. Shortly upon his return to Cyprus, Makarios became involved in the Cypriot enosis movement for a union with Greece, and in 1950 he was elected archbishop of Cyprus. His association with EOKA (National Organization of Cypriot Fighters), an underground organization that focused its attention on freeing the island from British colonial rule, caused Makarios to be exiled to the Seychelles by the British, who charged him with encouraging acts of terrorism. One year later he was allowed to return to Cyprus; when the British withdrew, Makarios was elected the first president of Cyprus. With his new outlook on the independent nation of Cyprus, Makarios distanced himself from the enosis movement. He attended the Belgrade Conference of the Heads of State of Non-Aligned Countries; his political position made him a target for the supporters of enosis. In 1965, when his term of office was to expire, the Cypriot people extended his term to 1968. In 1968 and 1973 he won reelection. Makarios was heavily pressured by the Greek government to increase Greek influence on Cypriot politics. Athens had been under the control of a military junta, which disliked Makarios and his reluctance to push for enosis. Makarios replied to the Greek Junta in the form of a letter demanding that the remaining Greek National Guard stationed in Cyprus be withdrawn. He also accused the junta of plotting against his life and against Cyprus. Thirteen days later, the junta ordered the Greek National Guard in Cyprus to overthrow Makarios and take control of the island. Makarios survived the attempted coup and escaped to England. The coup caused permanent damage in Cyprus by giving Turkey a pretext for a Turkish invasion that split the island in two, separating the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot communities. After a brief exile, Makarios returned to Cyprus in December 1974 to resume his presidency until his death in 1977. See also Cyprus, independence of; Cyprus, Turkish invasion of. Further reading: Bryant, Rebecca. Imagining the Modern: The Cultures of Nationalism in Cyprus. London: I.B.Tauris,
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2004; Mayes, Stanley. Makarios: A Biography. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981. Brian M. Eichstadt
Malaysia, Federation of The modern nation of Malaysia came to being at one minute past midnight on September 16, 1963, and within weeks was embroiled in controversy. Its formation was not looked upon kindly by its neighbor Indonesia, and soon scores of “spontaneous” demonstrations filled the streets of Jakarta as angry Indonesians shouted their displeasure outside Malaysia’s new embassy. Indonesian foreign ministry spokesmen made their feelings clear to Australia: Indonesia did not like being encircled by what it saw as the British Commonwealth. From that shaky start Malaysia emerged as a prosperous nation keen to embrace the world of new technology. In 2006 Malaysia was a nation of around 25 million people, building its own cars, possessing a burgeoning manufacturing industry, and exploiting its waters for oil, gas, and fish. Four areas—all British colonial possessions—were combined to make up Malaysia: the Federated Malay States, Singapore, British North Borneo, and Sarawak. Brunei, which had expressed interest, did not become a part of Malaysia. The four component parts of the new country had developed a common identity following Japanese occupation during World War II. Indonesia and the Philippines opposed the union and Indonesia supported military rebels in Malaysia after its formation. The new country was led by Prime Minister Abdul Rahman, who had been a principal figure before independence, and his premiership lasted until September 22, 1970. Known generally as Tunku—a Malaysian title for a prince—Abdul Rahman had trained as a lawyer in Britain, and upon his return to Malaysia worked as a prosecutor. He became a leader of UNMO, the leading nationalist party, and became the natural choice to lead the campaign for independence from Britain. This was achieved for the new nation of Malaya in 1957, with Abdul Rahman as its prime minister. Regional discussions then took place about including the other British possessions in the region, the island of Singapore, and, to balance the racial mix, the eastern states of Sabah and Sarawak in the new nation. As a result, Malaysia was formed in
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1963. Abdul Rahman went on to become the prime minister, leading the Alliance Party. He died in 1990. Several issues troubled the new nation. One was the exit of Singapore from Malaysia in 1965 to become a sovereign country. The Vietnam War of the United States and its allies against the North Vietnamese Army and the Vietcong was another issue. In 1969 racial riots broke out between Malays and non-Malays, chiefly over attempts to make Bahasa Malaysia the national language and over privileges that had been conferred on people of Malay race. Hundreds of people were killed in the riots. The government acted to cement the position of Malays with the creation of the title bumiputra, or son of the soil, which was given to the indigenous peoples of Sarawak and Sabah as well as Malays. Many of Chinese descent left the country as a result. Malaysia’s internal policies and its external relations were dominated for years by the oftenaggressive Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed, who came to power in 1981. Mahathir saw Malaysia prosper through his vision for the country’s future. A series of five-year plans were installed with the aim of having the country become a fully industrialized nation by 2020. This plan seemed successful until 1997, when economic crisis beset Southeast Asia, and a recession ensued. Internal politics gained international notoreity in September 1999 when a dispute between the deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, and the prime minister became public. Anwar was arrested and, after a trial for alleged sodomy held in the full glare of world publicity, was sentenced to six years in jail. He was released before serving the full prison term. Geographically, Malaysia is split in two. Peninsular Malaysia borders Thailand at its northern end. In the south the island nation of Singapore is connected to Malaysia by a causeway. Kuala Lumpur is the capital, with several universities and major industries as well as government institutions. Eastern Malaysia, with only about 15 percent of the population, occupies about fourth of the island of Borneo—Indonesia owns the lower section, with tiny Brunei surrounded by Malaysia on the western coast. Politically the population of nearly 24 million is divided into 13 states, four of which have a governor, with the remainder ruled by hereditary sultans. All states have unicameral state legislatures relected every five years that deal with state matters. One of the nine sultans is elected for five years to be the paramount ruler of Malaysia.
Major industries include the harvesting and export of palm oil, rubber processing, electronics, tin mining, light manufacturing, timber logging, petroleum production, and agriculture processing. Malaysia also exports electronic equipment. Malaysia’s foreign affairs are dominated by its relationships with neighboring giant Indonesia, the tiny island of Singapore, and a sometimes testy relationship with the West. Forest burning in Indonesia is a source of irritation between Malaysia and Indonesia as well as offshore oil exploration claims. An ongoing rebellion in Thailand’s Muslim-majority southern provinces also causes border tension. Malaysia has been a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) since its founding in 1967. It now includes 10 nations and over 500 million people. ASEAN primarily exists to promote economic growth, friendship, and regional stability. With its series of five-year economic plans, Malaysia aims to become a fully industrialized nation by 2020. Further reading: Hooker, Virginia M. A Short History of Malaysia. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2003; Kaur, Amarjit. Historical Dictionary of Malaysia. Lanham, MD, and London: Scarecrow Press, 2001. Thomas A. Lewis
Malcolm X
(1925–1965) American civil rights leader The militant African-American leader was born Malcolm Little, later taking the Muslim name el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz. His life story, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, was published posthumously in 1965, making him a hero among African Americans. Malcolm Little was born on May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska. His father was Earl Little, a lay preacher and supporter of Marcus Garvey. One of Earl Little’s uncles had been lynched, and three of his brothers died at the hands of whites. His mother’s family was from Grenada. The family moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1926, and then to Lansing, Michigan, where Malcolm grew up. He saw his family’s house burned down by the Ku Klux Klan. Two years later, in 1931, his father was found dead after having been run over by a street car; it was believed that he had been murdered by the group who set fire to his house. Soon afterward Malcolm’s mother was declared insane and was moved to a mental institution. Malcolm did well at junior high
school, graduating at the top of his class, but a teacher he admired told him that it was unrealistic for African Americans to aspire to be lawyers. After several years in foster homes, Malcolm spent some time in a detention home and then moved to Boston to be with his sister. He found work shining shoes, then joined the New Haven Railroad, but he quickly found himself involved in crime. He was refused an army position in World War II after allegedly claiming that as soon as he had a gun, he would organize other African Americans. In 1946, he was arrested with another African American and two white women stealing goods to sell to a pawnshop. The women claimed that they had been coerced into the crime, and Malcolm was jailed for 10 years. In prison, Malcolm joined the Nation of Islam, which held the belief in the inherent superiority of black people. Released from prison in 1952, he visited the Nation of Islam headquarters in Chicago, where he met with Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the sect. Many African Americans believe that their surnames came to them from white slave owners; Malcolm Little changed his family name to “X.” Over several years, Malcolm X toured the United States and was regarded as one of the best speakers and organizers for the Nation of Islam. He talked much of the exploitation of African Americans by whites and urged black separatism rather than integration and racial equality. Indeed, he felt that there should be greater black self-dependence and that violence was justified for self-protection. This latter belief alienated him from many of the civil rights leaders at the time who urged for nonviolent resistance to racism. In 1959 Malcolm X went to Africa for the first time, visiting the United Arab Republic (Egypt), Sudan, Nigeria, and Ghana, partially to help organize a tour by Elijah Muhammad that followed. The Nation of Islam in the United States grew in numbers, and in 1961 he founded Muhammad Speaks, the official journal for the Nation of Islam. Settling in Harlem, New York, he became a minister at Mosque Number Seven. Malcolm X had become a controversial figure in the Black Muslim movement, meeting with Cuban leader Fidel Castro in September 1960 when the Cuban politician was in New York to address the United Nations General Assembly. The Cuban delegation refused to stay in the Shelburne Hotel after being asked to pay in advance, and moved to the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, where Malcolm X and other African-American community leaders met them.
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Malcolm X is most associated with the militant struggle for civil rights for African Americans in the United States.
In 1963 Elijah Muhammad suspended him from the movement when he described the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy as a “case of chickens coming home to roost,” a remark that was regarded as extremely controversial. In March 1964 Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam and in the following month went on a pilgrimage to Mecca. He had wanted to set up his own organization as a more radical wing of the Nation of Islam, but his time in Saudi Arabia led him to see that whites were not necessarily innately evil and that compromise was possible. In October 1964 he reaffirmed that he had embraced orthodox Islam, but this did not prevent death threats from white extremists and also rival Black Muslims. He was shot dead on February 21, 1965, at a Harlem ballroom. Three Black Muslims were later convicted of the murder. The Autobiography of Malcolm X, compiled by writer Alex Haley from numerous interviews with Malcolm X shortly before the latter’s murder, was published posthumously and became an overnight best seller. Malcolm X had married Betty X (née Sanders) in Lansing, Michigan, and
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they had six daughters; the youngest two, twins, were born after Malcolm’s murder. See also Civil Rights movement, U.S. Further Reading: DeCaro, Louis A., Jr. On the Side of My People: A Religious Life of Malcolm X. New York: New York University Press, 1996; Dyson, Michael Eric. Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995; Sales, William W., Jr. From Civil Rights to Black Liberation: Malcolm X and the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Boston: South End Press, 1994. Justin Corfield
Mandela, Nelson
(1918– ) South African leader Nelson Mandela was considered by many to be the most respected world leader alive in the early 21st century. During the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa, he remained unembittered by a regime that offered him only indignity and poverty. His story cannot be separated from that of his family, colleagues, and supporters in the African National Congress (ANC) and a wider coalition of liberation groups in South Africa. In his fight for the right to live an ordinary life, Mandela gave up career and family, lived the life of an outlaw, and endured 27 years of imprisonment. Mandela was born on July 18, 1918, the eldest child of his father’s third wife, Nosekeni Fanny, in the village of Mvezo, Umtata, the capital of the Transkei, in the southeast of South Africa, and was called Rolihlahla. He was given the name Nelson Mandela at age seven when he attended a mission school, the first member of his family to do so. Madiba, as ANC leaders call him affectionately, is his clan name. Following his father’s defiance of a local magistrate, the family lost their inheritance and moved to Qunu, a large village north of Mvezo, where Mandela enjoyed an idyllic childhood as a herd boy. When he was nine, his father died and he was sent to the house of Chief Jongintaba Dalindyebo, the acting regent of the Thembu people, who raised him to become an adviser to the Thembu royal house. Through education Mandela gradually developed a tribal and national identity. Tribal elders expected him to learn by observation and passed down Xhosa history and culture to him. He witnessed the free speech and consensus decision-making of the men of the Thembu court, and also learned about British
and Dutch imperialism. At 16, he was circumcised, a traditional site of passage into manhood. Following his mother he became Christian, was baptized into the Methodist Church, and enrolled in a number of mission schools. At the Clarkebury Boarding Institute, Mandela reveled in sports and learned that ability was more important than lineage. He then attended Healdtown, the Wesleyan College at Fort Beaufort, 175 miles southwest of Umtata, the largest liberal arts school for Africans south of the equator, and was appointed prefect. His education made him both an Anglophile and an African, as he came to admire British manners, to meet people from other tribes, and to think independently. At 21, Mandela entered University College, Fort Hare, the only institution for higher education for blacks in South Africa. He studied law and joined the Student Christian Association, where he met Oliver Tambo. Mandela started a B.A., but did not complete it until 1943 because he disagreed with the principal about the voting system for the Student Representative Council. At 23, to escape an arranged marriage, Mandela ran away to Johannesburg, where he lived on a meager wage and studied at night to complete his degree at the University of South Africa. Mandela was so poor that he went without food, wore patched clothes, and walked six miles to and from work to save the bus fare. Although the partners at the law firm discouraged politics, Walter Sisulu and Gaur Radebe—a fellow articled clerk—believed that politics was the only longterm solution to the problem of race relations in South Africa. In the 1950s Mandela opened the first firm of black African lawyers with Oliver Tambo. Mandela joined the ANC in 1943 and helped transform it from a deferential nongovernmental organization to a mass movement. Founded in 1912, the ANC was the oldest African organization in South Africa and advocated multiracialism. By the 1940s, however, the ANC was more concerned with maintaining the privilege of elite black South Africans. Mandela enrolled in the law program at the University of Witswaterand, where he met white and Indian students his own age who would also become leaders in the struggle. The ANC formed a Youth League on Easter Sunday 1944, and adopted its proposal for boycotts, strikes, and protest demonstrations. The Youth League had been inspired by Indian demonstrations in 1946 in response to laws restricting their movement and their right to buy property. The National Party won national elections in 1948 and passed the Group Areas Act in 1950. Apartheid, or the separation of black and white into urban areas on
the basis of white superiority, became law. On Freedom Day, May 1, 1948, two-thirds of African workers stayed at home, and the government banned meetings by antiapartheid activists. A coalition of groups organized a National Day of Protest (NDP) on June 26, 1950. The Defiance Campaign, in which 8,500 volunteers defied laws and went to jail on the anniversary of the NDP in 1952, was Mandela’s apprenticeship as a freedom fighter. Mandela believed that the form of resistance was determined by the enemy, and that nonviolent resistance was a tactic rather than a principle. He traveled the country explaining the campaign and training volunteers to respond to police nonviolently. The government began to ban people, which was like informal imprisonment, and to conduct arrests and raids of the homes and offices of people linked to nongovernmental organizations. The government increased repression with the Sophiatown evictions in 1953, the Bantu Education Act of 1955—which transferred control of education to the Native Affairs Department—and the massacre of 69 peaceful protesters at Sharpeville in 1960. Oliver Tambo left the country and formed the external wing of the ANC. Mandela was arrested for treason in 1956, and when the trial ended in 1961, the government began to appoint its own judges, to use torture in prison, and— starting at the end of 1963—to harass and imprison wives of freedom fighters, including Nomzamo Winifred Madikizela, whom Mandela had married in 1958. For the next two years Mandela went underground and became an outlaw, disguising himself as a chauffeur, chef, or garden boy. By 1962 the ANC had established a military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), which adopted a policy of sabotage of infrastructure. Mandela studied guerrilla warfare and surveyed the country’s industrial areas, transport system, and communications network. He attended the Pan African Freedom Movement for East, Central and Southern Africa in Addis Ababa, and organized financial support for the MK. The government passed the Sabotage Act, which allowed house arrests that were not subject to challenge in court, restricted the printing of the words of banned people, and passed the Ninety-Day Detention Law, which allowed detention without charge. On his return to South Africa Mandela was arrested and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. He defended himself against the charges of inciting the country to strike and leaving the country without travel documents. Standing in the courtroom in his kaross, or traditional clothing, he put the state on trail, arguing that in a state where there was no justice without representation,
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he had no option but to follow his conscience in defiance of the law. In late May 1963 Mandela was transferred to Robben Island, to the north of Cape Town. He knew about the island from childhood stories of Xhosa warriors who had been banished there. Nine months into his sentence the police discovered Rivonia, the house from which the ANC had operated underground; they arrested the commanders of the MK and charged them with sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow the government. Realizing they could face the death penalty, the accused defended themselves on moral grounds. Mandela rejected the allegation that he was a communist and admitted his African nationalism and support for British parliamentary democracy. The MK, seeking to respond to increased Afrikaner repression and growing African restlessness, had adopted a policy of sabotage to prevent civil war and to provide the best conditions for future relations. prison life Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment; he would be imprisoned for 27 years. By 1962 Robben Island had become the toughest correctional facility in South Africa. Prisoners were classified into four groups according to political opinion and the extent to which they were prepared to adopt servile behavior. D prisoners could write and receive only one letter of 500 words every six months to or from their immediate families, defined according to Western culture. Prisoners were not permitted to touch their relatives or to speak in their native language. They were given insufficient clothing, bedding, and food. In 1979, after 15 years of protests, African, Indian, and mixed-race prisoners received the same food as white prisoners, including fresh vegetables and meat. Mandela considered the struggle in prison a microcosm of the struggle in the country. He refused to be robbed of his dignity, to show emotion, or to despair. He fought for reforms such as better food, study privileges, and dismissal of officers, communicating his complaints during the visits of dignitaries such as the Red Cross, three justices of the Supreme Court, and Mrs. Helen Suzman, the only member of the Liberal Progressive Party in the parliament and the sole parliamentary opposition to apartheid. Mandela’s first protest was against short trousers. He refused a pair of long trousers until all prisoners were given them in 1965. He endured 13 years of hard labor in the limestone quarry until it was abolished in 1977. It took three years to convince the authorities that prisoners needed sunglasses, and when they were given them, the prisoners had to pay for these
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glasses themselves. Sunday services with a sympathetic preacher, books, games, tournaments, plays, concerts, and gardening provided some relief. Beginning in the early 1980s, Mandela sought to bring the government and the ANC to the point of talks. In March 1982 Mandela was transferred off Robben Island, and in 1988 he was relocated to a cottage within Victor Verster prison, in the town of Paarl, northeast of Cape Town. South African president F. W. de Klerk began to dismantle apartheid. He seemed prepared to negotiate with Mandela, but often sought to secure his own power through the guise of equality. On February 3, 1990, Mandela was released and greeted by a great crowd in Cape Town. He challenged the people to bring the government to the negotiating table. After his release Mandela knew that his dream of a simple family life would again be sacrificed as he worked for a new South Africa. (His first marriage, to Evelyn, had ended in 1955 when she became more interested in the Jehovah’s Witnesses than in politics.) In 1992 Mandela and Winnie separated. Democratic elections were held in 1994. Mandela was elected president for a five-year term and immediately embarked upon an ambitious program of reconstruction, which remained the struggle for South Africans into the 21st century. Further reading: Asmal, Kader, David Chidester, and Wilmot James, eds. Nelson Mandela in His Own Words: From Freedom to the Future. London: Little, Brown, 2003; Drummond, Allan. Nelson Mandela. Mentone, Vic.: Green Barrow Publishing, 2004; Guiloineau, Jean. Nelson Mandela: The Early Life of Rolihlahla Mandiba. Berkeley, CA: Atlantic Books, 2002; Mandela, Nelson. Long Walk to Freedom. Abacus, 1994; Nelson Mandela Foundation. A Prisoner in the Garden: Opening Nelson Mandela’s Prison Archive. Camberwell, Vic.: Penguin, 2005. Julia Pitman
Manley, Michael
(1924–1997) Jamaican political leader A leading spokesperson for Third World socialist movements and social justice for the world’s downtrodden and underprivileged, Michael Norman Manley dominated Jamaican politics from the time of his father’s death in 1969 until his retirement from politics in 1992. Serving three terms as prime minister (1972–76, 1976–80, and 1989–92), he headed Jamaica’s People’s National Party (PNP), founded in 1938 by his father, Norman
Manley, which led the drive for Jamaican independence from Great Britain, achieved in 1962. Likened in his impact on global affairs to Indira Gandhi of India, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, and other prominent Third World figures of the cold war era, Manley was born in Kingston, Jamaica on December 10, 1924. His Jamaican-born black father, an Oxford-trained attorney, was a leading figure in the island’s political life from the 1930s until his death; his England-born white mother, Edna Swithenbank Manley, was a highly regarded artist and sculptor. Despite his privileged background, which he readily acknowledged, in 1942 at age 18 Manley enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force, serving in the European theater but seeing no combat. After the war he attended the London School of Economics, becoming a protégé of prominent British socialist Harold Laski. Returning to Jamaica, in the early 1950s he became involved in the country’s burgeoning trade union movement; in 1962 he was appointed to a Senate seat in the newly independent nation-state and became vice president of the PNP. Described as “tall, handsome, charismatic, and a spellbinding orator,” Manley promoted a pragmatic left-socialist democratic populism that resonated among large sectors of the Jamaican electorate. Determined to improve the living conditions of his country’s poor majority and to enhance Jamaica’s standing vis-à-vis the more advanced industrial world, during his first term as prime minister he increased the state’s role in the country’s bauxite industry, the country’s principal export commodity and a major source of foreign exchange. He also instituted a range of leftpopulist policies in the arenas of health, education, and unemployment. A shrewd politician, he cast himself as an authentic expression of the needs and aspirations of Jamaica’s poor and dispossessed, allying himself with the religio-nationalist Rastafarian movement and integrating reggae music and other forms of AfroCaribbean artistic expression into his political repertoire. After his 1980 electoral defeat by Conservative E. P. G. Seaga, and in the context of the neoliberalism of the Reagan-Thatcher years, Manley recast his policies during his third and final term in office (1989–92), privatizing some industries, cutting government spending, and pursuing more orthodox monetary, trade, and investment policies, while never relinquishing his rhetorical or practical commitment to improving the living standards of the majority. Further reading: Levi, Darrell E. Michael Manley: The Making of a Leader. London: A. Deutsch, 1989; Meeks, Brian.
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Narratives of Resistance: Jamaica, Trinidad, and the Caribbean. Mona, Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2000. Michael J. Schroeder
Marcos, Ferdinand and Imelda (1917–1989 and 1929– ) Filipino leaders
Although popularly elected at first, Ferdinand Marcos and his wife, Imelda, transformed the Philippines into a police state during the early 1970s. With the financial and political backing of the United States, which valued their strong anticommunist policies, the Marcoses ruled for 15 years before being forced from power by popular protest in mid-1986. Ferdinand Marcos was born in Llocos Norte Province at the northwestern tip of Luzon, a rice- and tobacco-growing region. His father was a politician and educator, his mother a teacher from a prominent local family. Marcos was a brilliant law student in the 1930s; he successfully convinced the Philippine Supreme Court to drop a murder conviction against him for shooting a political rival of his father. During World War II, Marcos fought in the Battle of Bataan and claimed to have led a guerrilla unit, the Maharlikas, against Japan. Many critics doubted the veracity of his claims. In 1949 Marcos won a seat in the Philippine House of Representatives. In 1954, he married Imelda Romualdez, a well-connected former beauty queen. He became a senator in 1959 and served as president of the senate from 1963 to 1965. He was elected president of the Philippines in 1965. During his first term, Marcos championed a number of large-scale development projects that earned him the support of both elites and peasants. He built roads, bridges, schools, and hospitals. Politically, such programs fared far better than the land reform agenda that Marcos had made a key part of his campaign. Much of the money for these projects came from the United States, which was eager for the support of Asian nations in its struggle against communism. Marcos won a second term in 1969. Soon after, the situation within the country deteriorated; economic stagnation, crime, and political instability came to characterize national life. A communist insurgency erupted in the countryside. With the instability as pretext, and, as later accounts would reveal, actually engineering much of it, Marcos began arrogating more powers to himself. In September 1972 he instituted
From left: Lady Bird Johnson, Ferdinand Marcos, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Imelda Marcos stand in front of the White House.
martial law and would rule by decree for much of the next decade and a half. During this period Marcos proclaimed the beginning of a New Society, which would cast away the personal and political values of colonialism in favor of modern values. But even as Marcos and his supporters called for self-sacrifice they began to pocket enormous sums of money from the public till. Marcos broke up many of the business conglomerates run by some of the country’s leading families and handed these profitable enterprises to his own family members and loyal supporters. He also nationalized industries and created monopolies to enrich himself and his supporters. Marcos ended martial law in January 1981 with Proclamation 2045. Although he appeared to loosen his grip on power, the New Republic proved to be little more than a repackaged version of the corrupt and repressive New Society. Because of a boycott by the main opposition parties, Marcos won a large victory in the June 1981 presidential election. However, years of corruption began to affect the economy as its national debt climbed to $25 billion by early 1985. Marcos’s health also begin to fail. Because he suffered from what was believed to be kidney disease, his wife Imelda took on more responsibilities, including meeting foreign dignitaries. The United States also began to withdraw its support of Marcos. The assassination of Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr., the main opposition leader, in August 1983 ignited a people’s movement that would result in the exile of the Marcoses three years later. Aquino and his wife, Corazon, had been
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long-term rivals of Marcos. It is widely believed that had martial law not been declared, Aquino would have won the 1972 presidential election. Although a high-level commission blamed Marcos loyalists for the killing, the government ignored its findings. Aquino’s murder and the subsequent cover-up became the rallying point for a diverse group of opponents. Still confident of his popularity, in November 1985 Marcos called a “snap” election for February 1986, 16 months before the end of his term. After the Marcoscontrolled National Assembly declared him the victor, Catholic Primate of the Philippines Cardinal Jaime Sin, Minister of Defense Juan Ponce Enrile, and Lieutenant General Fidel V. Ramos rallied around the legitimate winner, Aquino’s widow Corazon Cojuango Aquino. The People Power Movement forced Marcos out of office on the day of his inauguration. He fled in a U.S. Air Force plane with his family and closest supporters and eventually settled in Honolulu, Hawaii. In ensuing months details emerged about how he had used his office to accumulate vast amounts of wealth. Filipino officials estimated that Marcos and his wife and supporters stole between $5 and $10 billion. The great symbol of this corruption amid poverty became Imelda Marcos’s collection of shoes, handbags, and formal gowns, which numbered in the thousands. Ferdinand Marcos died on September 28, 1989, in Hawaii. Imelda Marcos returned to the Philippines in 1992, served in the House of Representatives from 1995 to 2001, and lost two bids for the presidency. Further reading: Brands, H. W. Bound to Empire. New York: Oxford, 1992; Marcos, Ferdinand. Notes on the New Society of the Philippines. Marcos Foundation, 1973; Rempel, William C. Delusions of a Dictator. Boston: Little, Brown, 1993; Zaide, Sonia M. The Philippines: A Unique Nation. Manila: All Nations Publishing, 1999. Thomas Robertson
Marshall, Thurgood
(1908–1993) U.S. Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall was special counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and a U.S. Supreme Court justice during the 20th-century Civil Rights movement of the United States. Marshall is lionized for his argument before the Supreme Court in the case Brown v. Board of Education, which ended the federal sanction of segregation
in public schools. He was also the first African-American Supreme Court justice. Thurgood Marshall was born Thoroughgood Marshall on June 2, 1908, in Baltimore, Maryland. His father was a steward at a country club, and his mother was an elementary school teacher. Marshall was named for his paternal grandfather, a slave from the Congo who won his freedom. His grandfather had chosen the name Thoroughgood when he enlisted in the Union Army during the Civil War. At age six, Marshall legally had his name changed to Thurgood due to criticism from his peers. Marshall was a self-proclaimed hell-raiser in elementary school and was first introduced to the Constitution of the United States when he was forced to read it as punishment. He took great interest in Article III, which concerned the judiciary branch, and also in the Bill of Rights. Even from an early age, he was troubled by civil rights abuses. Marshall graduated with honors from Douglas High School in Baltimore, Maryland, and then attended the all-black Lincoln University in Oxford, Pennsylvania, the oldest African-American institute of higher education in the country. In his junior year Marshall married his first wife, Vivian Burey. The next year, Marshall graduated Lincoln University. Experience on the debate team at Lincoln University had inspired Marshall to major in prelaw. After graduation Marshall applied to the University of Maryland Law School, but was rejected due to his race. He then turned to Howard University Law School in Washington, D.C. It was there that Marshall met Charles Hamilton Houston, the vigorous vice dean of the Howard law school. Houston inspired Marshall’s interest in constitutional law and instilled in him the idea of lawyers as “social engineers” capable of effecting change for the AfricanAmerican community. Marshall graduated Howard University Law School as valedictorian and opened a law practice in Baltimore. Marshall acted as legal counsel to the local chapter of the NAACP. In 1933 Marshall argued his first major court case with the NAACP, in which he won the first African-American student, Donald Gaines Murray, a place in the University of Maryland Law School, the school that had rejected Marshall. In fact, Murray was the first African-American student to enter a state law school below the Mason-Dixon Line. In 1935 Charles Hamilton Houston became chief counsel for the NAACP. A year later, Marshall joined the New York City chapter of the NAACP as Hous-
Thurgood Marshall was the first African-American justice on the United States Supreme Court.
ton’s assistant. When Houston retired to private practice in 1938, Marshall took over as chief counsel for the NAACP. Marshall founded the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund (LDF) to attack segregation through judicial and legislative means. Throughout the 1950s Marshall traveled the South arguing civil rights cases before state and federal courts. He received several death threats during this tour and narrowly avoided a lynching. Of the 32 cases Marshall argued before the Supreme Court on behalf of the NAACP, he won 29. In 1954 Marshall won the landmark case for the NAACP, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. The unanimous Supreme Court decision overruled the Plessy v. Ferguson precedent. A year after the Brown v. Board decision, Marshall’s wife, Vivian Burey, died; Marshall remarried the same year. His second wife, Cecilia Suyat, was a secretary at the NAACP’s New York City office. In 1962 President John F. Kennedy appointed Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit. Marshall struggled with the decision to leave behind 23 years as the NAACP head counsel, but ultimately followed his sense of duty to his coun-
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try. After serving three years on the Court of Appeals, Marshall was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson as solicitor general of the United States, the third-highest office in the Justice Department. President Johnson proceeded to nominate Marshall to the Supreme Court in 1967. Marshall’s nomination was confirmed in the Senate 69 to 11, and he was sworn in as the first African-American Supreme Court justice on October 2, 1967. Marshall served on the court for almost 24 years. On the liberal Warren court, Marshall joined a majority in favor of civil rights for minorities and the expansion of rights for all citizens. Marshall focused his energy on negotiating unanimity among his fellow justices to increase the weight of the Warren Court’s rulings. However, as the court grew more conservative in the 1970s and 1980s, Marshall became famous for his vehement minority dissents, arguing in favor of affirmative action, due process, and First Amendment rights, and against the death penalty. Thurgood Marshall died of heart failure in Bethesda, Maryland, on January 24, 1993. His legacy as Mr. Civil Rights marked him in history alongside activists such as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. See also Civil Rights movement, U.S. Further reading: Mooney, L., ed. “Thurgood Marshall.” In Newsmakers. Vol. 1993. Detroit, MI: Gale Research; “Profile of Justice Thurgood Marshall.” In U.S. Courts: The Federal Judiciary. United States Government website, http://www. uscourts.gov/outreach/resources/brown_marshallbio.htm (cited February 2006); Williams, Juan. Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary. New York: Times Books, 1998; Wilson, H. W. “Marshall, Thurgood.” In Biography Reference Bank online database, http://hwwilsonweb.com (cited January 2006). Anna Brown
Marshall Plan World War II decimated Europe’s infrastructure and economy, leaving bombed and gutted buildings, destroyed factories and businesses, and high unemployment. Hit heaviest were areas of industrial production and transportation. With Europe debt-ridden and financial reserves depleted by the war, the problems could not be easily fixed. Both U.S. and European officials put forth several plans, all of which were rejected. The one alternative for recovery called for German reparations.
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However, many officials felt such a plan would be the same mistake that was made after World War I and opted instead for U.S. investment in Europe. The United States initiated the European Recovery Program (ERP), generally referred to as the Marshall Plan. On June 5, 1947, U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall, in addressing the graduating class of Harvard University, outlined the U.S. government’s intentions for aiding European recovery. Marshall called for Europeans to create a plan that the United States, whose economy had grown rapidly during the war and the one major power whose infrastructure remained intact, would then subsidize. State Department officials would work with the nations of Europe to develop the program, which was named for Marshall. A month after Marshall’s speech European officials, led by British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin and French foreign minister Georges Bidault, met in Paris to discuss options for the proposal at the Conference of European Economic Cooperation (CEEC). Invited by the Western powers as a sign of good faith, the Soviet Union attended the conference as well. However, Foreign Minister Vyacheslav M. Molotov walked out, calling for Soviet rejection of the plan. Seeing it as a U.S. scheme to subjugate Europe by promoting free trade and economic unity, Soviet premier Joseph Stalin pressured Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary into rejecting it as well. In September the CEEC approved the formation of the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) to oversee the European side of the recovery program. Except for Germany and Spain, every nation outside the Soviet sphere joined. On April 2, 1948, the U.S. Congress formally authorized the ERP through passage of the Economic Cooperation Act, which President Truman signed the next day. Truman appointed Paul G. Hoffman, president of the Studebaker automobile corporation, as head of the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA), the U.S. agency that operated the ERP. W. Averell Harriman, a Lend-Lease representative to Britain and secretary of commerce under Truman, was made special representative to the participating countries to advise them on the program. Beginning operations in July 1948, the ECA had the objectives of strengthening European currencies, encouraging the development of industrial production, and facilitating international trade within Europe and its partners, especially the United States. Meanwhile, the OEEC met to determine European needs prior to any distribution of appropriations under the act. The revitalization plan proposed to the United States asked for $22 billion in aid. Congress approved
a Truman-backed $17-billion aid package with strong bipartisan support. The amount of aid received varied by country on a per capita basis. For instance, Great Britain received an approximate total of $3.3 billion while Iceland received only $43 million. Moreover, Allied nations and major industrial powers were given priority aid over those that had sided with the Axis powers or had remained neutral during the war. The same went for countries seen as strategic in the fight against communism, like West Germany. The basic idea of the plan was simple: The United States gave monetary grants to participating countries, which then utilized that aid to buy the materials needed for recovery—typically from the United States. The ECA and local governments jointly administered and processed the exchange, examining and distributing the aid where needed. As a result the U.S. economy flourished as the European recovery effort grew. Early on, imports consisted mostly of essential items like food, fuel, and materials for reconstruction; however, as western Europe stabilized and the cold war heated up, aid went more toward rebuilding military capabilities to defend against communist expansion. On the other hand, eastern Europe’s forced rejection of the Marshall Plan clearly showed the division in Europe leading toward the cold war. Unlike its former allies, the Soviet Union imposed large reparations on former Axis nations in its sphere of influence. Finland, Hungary, Romania, and East Germany were all forced to pay large stipends to the Soviet Union as well as to provide supplies and raw materials. Consequently the economies of eastern Europe did not recover as quickly, if at all, under Soviet rule. Over the four years of the Marshall Plan’s existence, participating countries received in total close to $13 billion in economic aid; with the exception of West Germany, the economies of all surpassed prewar levels when the program ended in 1951. Under the provisions of the plan none of the aid had to be repaid, as it was absorbed and reinvested in the economies of Europe and the United States. The lone exception was West Germany, which had to repay the United States a reduced amount of $1 billion; the final payment came in 1971. Seen as the first instrument of sustained European economic integration, the European Recovery Program removed tariff barriers, ended protectionism, and established institutions that could control the economy on a continental level—an idea European leaders had sought to institute in the past. Further reading: Duignan, Peter, and Lewis H. Gann. “The Marshall Plan.” Hoover Digest (1997); Hogan, Michael J.
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The Marshall Plan: America, Britain, and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947–1952. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987; Milward, Alan S. The Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1945–51. London: Methuen, 1984; Reynolds, David. “The European Response: Primacy of Politics.” Foreign Affairs (May/June 1997); Schain, Martin, ed. The Marshall Plan: Fifty Years After. New York: Palgrave, 2001. Steve Sagarra
McCarthyism The term McCarthyism defined a period of U.S. history during the 1950s when there was intense concern about Communist infiltration of American society. It took its name from U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, a Republican from Wisconsin, who was involved in accusing many people of being Communist or having Communist sympathies. These people were then often subjected to aggressive investigations, questioning by congressional committees. In many cases they faced harassment and, in some cases, what became known as “selective prosecution.” After World War II, the U.S. government became increasingly worried about the establishment of Communist or pro-Communist governments throughout all of eastern Europe. Many people in the United States started to feel threatened by the Soviet Union. This certainly increased in 1949, when the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb and the Communists were victorions in the Chinese civil war in the same year. With the start of the Korean War the following year, the idea of communism seeking to expand over the whole world was seen in many circles in the United States as a very real possibility. In January 1950 Alger Hiss, a high-level official in the State Department, was convicted of perjury. He would have been charged with espionage, but the statute of limitations had run out. Instead, he was charged with lying when he testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, the major group involved in questioning suspected Communists. On February 9, 1950, Senator Joe McCarthy produced a piece of paper that he claimed contained a list of 205 people working in the State Department who were known to the secretary of state as having been members of the Communist Party. McCarthy received much press coverage, and the term McCarthyism has been traced to a Washington Post cartoon by Herblock, published on
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March 29, 1950, showing a tottering pillar on which an elephant—the symbol of the Republican Party—is being asked to stand. In July 17, 1950, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were arrested. Both were members of the Communist Party, and the couple both worked on the Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos National Laboratory during the war. With the American government eager to find out how the Soviet Union had managed to explode their atomic bomb so quickly, investigations led to the Rosenbergs, who were charged with stealing atomic bomb secrets for the Soviet Union. The Rosenbergs were found guilty, although doubts were cast on the constitutionality and the applicability of the Espionage Act of 1917, under which they were tried, as well as the perceived bias of the trial judge, Irving R. Kaufman. The Rosenbergs were executed on June 19, 1953, being the first U.S. civilians to be executed for espionage, and the first Americans ever to be executed for espionage in peacetime. With many high-profile cases like those of Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs, it was not long before the FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, started assigning increasingly large numbers of his agents to investigating Communists and suspected Communists. In this, the FBI were subsequently found to have broken laws, being involved in burglaries, opening mail, and installing illegal wiretaps. From 1947 on, the House Un-American Activities Committee had started to question people connected with Hollywood, serving subpoenas on film actors, directors, and some screenwriters. The first 10, known as the “Hollywood Ten,” refused to cooperate and pleaded the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech and free assembly. The defense was rejected, and eight of the 10 were jailed for a year, and two for six months. Thereafter, witnesses tended to plead the protection of the Fifth Amendment, refusing to give any evidence that might incriminate them. Those questioned could either use this as a defense or name other Communists. Senator McCarthy came to head the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He then started searching through the card catalogs of the overseas library program of the State Department, finally getting them to remove books which were deemed to be communist or pro-communist. The blacklists then started, although in many ways these had been operating since November 1947, when Eric Johnston, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, issued a press release that came to be known as the Waldorf Statement. Several hundred people were jailed during the McCarthy period, as it became known, with between 10,000
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and 12,000 losing their jobs. A few scholars, such as John D’Emilio, have managed to show that more people were targeted for homosexuality than communism. In the film industry more than 300 actors, actresses, writers, and directors were not able to find work because of the blacklists. In 1952 the U.S. Supreme Court voted to uphold the decision made in lower courts in Alder v. Board of Education of New York that state-based loyalty review panels could fire any teachers deemed subversive. As tensions mounted, Arthur Miller launched his attack on McCarthyism in his play The Crucible, using the Salem witch trials of 1692 as a metaphor in which the accusation was tantamount, in the public mind, to guilt. It was Edward R. Murrow, the CBS broadcast journalist, who criticized McCarthy on March 9, 1954, on his “Report on Joseph R. McCarthy,” stating that the senator had been abusive toward witnesses. Soon afterward, when McCarthy attacked the U.S. Army’s chief counsel, Joseph Welch, Welch replied, “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” It was a rebuke that slowly led to a move away from McCarthyism. Gradually, even President Dwight D. Eisenhower began to see McCarthy as extremely distasteful. In November 1954, when the Republicans lost control of the Senate, McCarthy was dumped from the Government Committee on Operations of the Senate. Soon afterward he was formally censured by a vote of 67 to 22 for conduct “contrary to Senate traditions.” McCarthy remained as a senator for another two years. He had always been a heavy drinker and died on May 2, 1957, from cirrhosis of the liver. Further Reading: Fried, Albert. McCarthysim: The Great American Red Scare: A Documentary History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997; Haynes, John Earl. Red Scare or Red Menace?: American Communism and Anti-Communism in the Cold War Era. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2000; Schrecker, Ellen. Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown, 1998; Schrecker, Ellen. The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford Books, St. Martin’s Press, 2004. Justin Corfield
Meir, Golda
(1898–1978) Israeli politician Known for most of her life as Goldie Mabovitch, Golda Meir spent her formative years in Kiev, Ukraine, where
Israel’s first woman prime minister, Golda Meir, was noted for both her idealism and her practical nature.
pogroms and anti-Semitism plagued her life. Golda’s only memories of this time were of being afraid, hungry, and cold. Tired of their lives in Kiev, the Mabovitch family moved to Byelorussia in 1903 and then to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1906. Upon graduation as valedictorian from junior high school, Meir pleaded with her parents to allow her to attend high school and become a teacher. At 14 she ran away from home to live with her sister in Denver. She attended high school and worked at a restaurant, where she overheard debates about Zionism, anarchism, socialism, and suffrage. Meir met Morris Meirson in 1915, and they moved back to Wisconsin so she could finish high school. With her parents’ support she enrolled in Wisconsin’s normal school for teaching in 1916 and taught Yiddish the following year. Meir and Meirsen married in 1917, and she began working with the Poalei Tzion movement. Meir and Morris then moved to Palestine. Their first child was born in 1924. That same year Meir was elected as an officer of Histadrut, where she met influential Zionists including David Ben-Gurion, with whom she would be professionally connected for much of her career. She
Menchú, Rigoberta
was elected secretary of the Women’s Labor Council in 1928 and separated from her husband; however, they never officially divorced. Meir helped found Mapai, Israel’s major labor party, which led every coalition government for the first three decades of its existence. In the mid-1930s Meir was elected to the executive board of Histadrut, became the fundraiser for the Jewish Agency, and was elected as the head of the agency’s Political Department. Following Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948, Ben-Gurion appointed Meir as Israel’s ambassador to the Soviet Union. Unhappy to leave the newly established Israel, she returned and was appointed minister of labor and national insurance, in which post she remained until 1956. She adopted the Hebrew name Golda Meir. As foreign minister from 1956 to 1966, she attempted to build bridges with the emerging independent countries in Africa via an assistance program based on Israel’s nation-building experience. Diagnosed with cancer in 1963, Meir retired from the Knesset; however, her retirement was short-lived. Supportive of the Mapai Party merger and multiparty alignment, she was elected secretary general of the coalition in 1966. When Prime Minister Eshkol died in 1969, Golda Meir became the world’s third female prime minister. Combining idealism and practicality, Meir led a full professional and personal life. She dedicated her career to leading Israel’s struggle in survival and peace. Both of these objectives were thwarted when Egypt and Syria attacked Israel during Yom Kippur in 1973. Meir was blamed for overestimating the strength of the Israel Defense Forces and misjudging the surrounding Arab countries’ intentions. In 1974 she resigned and during the following four years worked on her autobiography and spent time with her family until her death in 1978. See also Arab-Israeli War (1973). Further reading: Martin, Ralph G. Golda: The Romantic Years. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1988; Meir, Golda. My Life. Jerusalem: Steimatzky’s Agency Ltd, 1975; Meir, Menahem. My Mother Golda Meir: A Son’s Evocation of Life with Golda Meir. New York: Arbor House Publishing Company, 1983. Jenna Levin
Menchú, Rigoberta
(1959– ) Guatemalan peace activist Catapulted to international fame by her moving testimonial, I, Rigoberta Menchú (1983), Rigoberta Menchú
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Tum was born on January 9, 1959, to a poor family of Quiché-Maya Guatemalan Indians, among the largest of Guatemala’s 26 indigenous ethno-linguistic groups. Her gripping narrative of her life, her community, and their struggles for peace and justice in the highlands, coffee plantations, and cities of Guatemala was the principal impetus behind her receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992. In recognition of her work for social justice and ethno-cultural reconciliation based on respect for the rights of indigenous peoples, the prize committee stated that “. . . Rigoberta Menchú stands out as a vivid symbol of peace and reconciliation across ethnic, cultural and social dividing lines, in her own country, on the American continent, and in the world. . . . In her social and political work, she has always borne in mind that the long-term objective of the struggle is peace.” In 1999 her narrative was challenged as partly fabricated. The allegations opened up a wide-ranging debate about the veracity of her account and the nature of truth in testimonial narratives. Challenges to specific episodes in her account did not question the genocidal nature of the Guatemalan government’s anti-insurgency campaigns; the extremes of exploitation, oppression, and violence suffered by the country’s indigenous peoples; or Menchú’s moral courage or commitment to peace and justice. In response to the controversy, the Nobel Prize Committee reaffirmed its decision. As a vast anthropological and historical literature attests, Guatemala’s indigenous population has been subject to centuries of victimization and oppression by more powerful groups. This is the context for understanding Rigoberta Menchú’s narrative, life, and struggles for justice. In her teens she became involved in the social justice initiatives of the Catholic Church and in the women’s rights movement. Her father, Vicente Menchú, was a political activist, jailed and tortured for his alleged involvement in the death of a plantation owner. Upon his release he joined the Peasant Union Committee (CUC), and in 1979 Rigoberta did the same. The next year Vicente was killed by security forces during a peaceful protest action at the Spanish embassy in Guatemala City. Soon after, she became involved in a strike by farm workers on the Pacific coast and in other anti-government actions, and in 1981 was compelled to flee the country. In exile she became a leading figure in the international movement for indigenous rights in Guatemala. In 1983 she narrated her testimony to a Venezuelan anthropologist, who published her account the following year. The book proved enormously influential, used in colleges and universities worldwide. In 1999 a U.S. anthropologist detailed numerous discrepancies in her account. Controversy has raged
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since. A predominant consensus acknowledges many of the discrepancies while affirming the essential veracity of Menchú’s account. Since 1992 she has received many honors and prizes and in 2007 remained active in the struggle for the rights of indigenous peoples and women in Guatemala and Latin America. See also Guatemala, civil war in, (1960–1996). Further reading: Menchú, Rigoberta. I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala, ed. Elisabeth Burgos Debray. Translated by Ann Wright. London: Verso, 1984; Montejo, Victor D. Maya Intellectual Renaissance: Identity, Representation, and Leadership. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005; Stoll, David. Rigoberta Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999. Michael J. Schroeder
Mexico, agrarian reform in Among the principal causes of the Mexican revolution (1910–20) were the country’s highly unequal landowning patterns and growing landlessness among the rural majority, especially during the regime of dictator Porfirio Díaz (1876–1910). The 1917 constitution, which has governed Mexico since that time, included among its provisions several articles addressing the land issue, most prominently Article 27, which states in part: “The nation shall at all times have the right to impose on private property such limitations as the public interest may demand, as well as the right to regulate the utilization of natural resources . . . in order to conserve them and to ensure a more equitable distribution of public wealth.” Article 27 also stipulated that only ejidos (inalienable village-owned collective lands, generally distributed by villages to individual heads of households) and individual Mexican citizens could own Mexican land or subsoil rights. In the early 1920s, under intense international pressure, Article 27 was watered down in a series of constitutional amendments to permit foreign firms, most notably U.S. oil companies, to be granted concessions on Mexican territory for the exploitation of natural resources. Actual implementation of Article 27 varied greatly in accordance with the proclivities of individual presidents. In the 23 years from 1917 and 1940, approximately 30.6 million hectares were redistributed to villages and individuals. Around one-third of this total (34 percent) was redistributed from 1917 to 1934 under the presidencies of Venustiano Carranza
(1917–20), Alvaro Obregón (1920–24), and Plutarco Calles and his subordinates (1924–34), amounting to a little over 10.5 million hectares. The remaining two-thirds (66 percent), amounting to some 20.1 million hectares, was distributed by the administration of Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–40). After 1940, the popular clamor for land declined substantially, in consequence of both the aggressive implementation of the constitution’s land reform provisions under Cárdenas; formal representation of rural producers in national and local governments via the National Peasant Confederation (Confederación Nacional Campesino, or CNC); and the growth of rural-urban migration and the attendant shift in the nation’s demographic structure. According to one leading scholar, “[the] era of agrarian violence that began in 1810 finally ended with the land reform of the 1930s.” (Tutino, From Insurrection to Revolution, p. 348.) After 1940, the national government under the PRI favored large commercial agricultural enterprises at the expense of smaller production units, resulting in growing impoverishment among rural dwellers. Under President Luis Echevvaría (1970–76), the government again emphasized the ejido sector, adding some 17 million hectares to the ejido total. This was the last major redistribution of Mexican land. In 1992 the government radically altered the nature of the ejido, in effect privatizing it by permitting ejido-holders (ejidatarios) to sell, rent, lease, or mortgage their properties. The neoliberal, free market, privatization-oriented reforms under President Vicente Fox (2000–06) continued the erosion of the ejido, though the institution remained important in many rural areas, while local struggles for land (as waged by the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, for instance) promised to continue into the foreseeable future. Further reading: Barry, Tom. Zapata’s Revenge: Free Trade and the Farm Crisis in Mexico. Boston: South End Press, 1995; Tutino, John. From Insurrection to Revolution in Mexico: Social Bases of Agrarian Violence, 1750–1940. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986. Michael J. Schroeder
Mobutu Sese Seko
(1930–1997) Congolese president Mobutu Sese Seko, a member of the Ngbandi ethnic group, was born in Lisala, Belgian Congo, in 1930. After receiving a Catholic education from white missionaries,
he began his public life by serving in the Belgian Colonial Army. He was a colonel by 1960 and appointed chief of staff of the Congolese Army by newly independent Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba. The struggle for Congolese independence left behind ethnic fighting and soon civil war. By September 1961 fighting erupted between Congolese troops and the United Nations (UN) forces sent to quiet the growing civil discontent. Sensing growing political disarray in the Congo, Mobutu seized power on November 24, 1965, in a successful coup over President Kasavubu following a power struggle between Kasavubu and his prime minister, Möise Tshombe. Mobutu declared himself president for a five-year term, placed Möise Tshombe on trial for treason, and condemned him to death. Mobutu took full executive powers into his own hands. The coup marked the beginning of the Second Congolese Republic and the reestablishment of minimal law and order. Mobutu appointed Colonel Leonard Mulamba as his prime minister and inaugurated a campaign of national reconstruction. This was highlighted by the 1966 establishment of the Movement de la Revolution (MPR), with himself as president. Mobutu went on to eliminate all opposition to his control while centralizing all decision making into his own presidency. Mobutu’s rule was not made official until 1967 when he instituted a new constitution. However, the years between 1967 and 1970 saw substantial clashes with students who had become disillusioned with Mobutu and his authoritarian rule. Nevertheless he was reelected president in 1970. Like many African leaders who would follow, Mobutu embarked on a campaign of pro-African cultural awareness, renaming the country the Republic of Zaïre in October 1971. He ordered all Africans to drop their Christian names, and priests were warned that they would face five years’ imprisonment if they were caught baptizing a Zaïrois child with a Christian name. The Shaba Wars of 1977 and 1978 threatened Mobutu’s constitutionally entrenched presidency. Several thousand soldiers of ex–prime minister Tshombe’s former Katanga army exiled in Angola had become suspicious of Mobutu’s offers of amnesty. In 1977 these same soldiers crossed the border into Shaba province. The continuing economic slump, combined with the attack by the Katanga troops, forced Mobutu to solicit foreign aid to restabilize the country. France, motivated by the opportunity to defeat Communist-backed troops in Africa, airlifted 1,500 elite Moroccan paratroopers into the Shaba region. The rebel army retreated but
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advanced again a year later in greater numbers. Mobutu persisted in his requests for international assistance and this time received helped from Belgium and France, with logistical support from the United States. The rebels were defeated again. In return for their assistance, France and Morocco urged Mobutu to democratize his increasingly hostile regime. Mobutu responded with pseudo-elections with a secret ballot that allowed 2,000 candidates to contest 270 seats in the legislative council and another 167 candidates to contest 18 elective seats in the political bureau. Mobutu was reelected. The remainder of Mobutu’s presidency would focus on high-profile foreign relations efforts meant to polish the tarnished image of his nation. He restored relations with Israel in 1982 and sent troops into Chad as part of a peacekeeping mission in 1983. Mobutu went on to suspend Zaïre’s membership in the Organization of African Unity in 1984 in support of Morocco’s walkout over the Western Sahara question. Recognizing the failing economic situation in Zaïre, in 1990 Mobutu called for a dialogue between the state and the people of Zaïre. The resulting dialogue saw 100 demonstrating students massacred by troops at Lubambashi in May of that year. Mobutu announced his resignation as chair of the MPR in an attempt to rise above the problems within the party. He went on to establish a special commission to draft a new constitution by April 1991 that finally allowed free operation of political parties. In January 1993 the High Council of the Republic declared Mobutu guilty of treason and threatened impeachment unless he recognized the legitimacy of the transitional parliament set up by the new constitution of 1991. Strikes and disorder followed while Mobutu attempted to reassert his authority. He reconvened the dormant national assembly as a rival to the High Council of the Republic and created a conclave that appointed Faustin Birindwa as prime minister. He announced the dissolution of the High Council and the dismissal of the Birindwa government in January 1994. Mobutu was overthrown in the First Congo War by Laurent-Désiré Kabila. When Mobutu’s government issued an order in November 1996 forcing Tutsis to leave Zaïre on penalty of death, they erupted in rebellion. From eastern Zaïre, with the support of presidents Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Yoweri Meseveni of Uganda, they launched an offensive to overthrow Mobutu. Ailing with prostate cancer, Mobutu was unable to coordinate the resistance. On May 16, 1997, following failed peace talks, Mobutu went into temporary exile in Togo,
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but lived mostly in Morocco. Mobutu died on September 7, 1997, in exile in Rabat, Morocco. Further reading: Haskin, Jeanne M. The Tragic State of Congo: From Decolonization to Dictatorship. New York: Algora Publishing, 2005; Ikamana, Pete. Mobutu’s Totalitarian Political System. London: Taylor and Francis, 2006; Smith, Jake. Dinner with Mobutu. Toronto: Xlibris Corporation, 2005. Rian Wall
Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott The bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, served as the most prominent example of effective grassroots activism within the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s, while also demonstrating the limits of such activism in the absence of support from the federal government. The boycott centered on the Jim Crow laws that governed the Montgomery bus system. The buses were segregated, with white riders allowed to sit in the front while black riders were limited to the back of the bus. The bus drivers, all of whom were white, were empowered to order black riders out of their seats to allow whites to sit if necessary. The immediate catalyst for the boycott was the arrest of Rosa Parks, the secretary for the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), for refusing to vacate her seat to allow a white man to sit down. Parks’s arrest on Friday, December 5, 1955, became a rallying point for the African-American community. A committee called the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) was formed that weekend, and decided to boycott the bus system until a set of limited demands were met. The association chose the 26-year-old pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as its primary spokesperson. White leaders in Montgomery initially believed that the boycott would fizzle out due to the winter season and the fact that most of the African Americans in Montgomery utilized the buses to travel to work. The bus company desired a settlement. City officials, on the other hand, with the support of racist organizations, decided to try to break the boycott through legal pressure, harassment, and intimidation. The city threatened to cancel the insurance of black-owned taxi companies, ticketed cars containing more than one passenger, and arrested the leaders of the association on felony conspiracy charges.
The NAACP, although somewhat critical of the boycott, led a legal challenge to Montgomery’s laws segregating public transportation. A federal district court ruled in the NAACP’s favor, leading to an appeal by Alabama officials to the Supreme Court (Browder v. Gayle). On November 13, 1956, the Court ruled that the segregation of public transportation violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause. The buses were integrated within a month. Despite this victory, the rest of the Jim Crow laws governing race relations in Montgomery remained intact, as did the segregation of transportation across most of the rest of the South. Furthermore, the response of Montgomery leaders provided an indication of the willingness of many whites to resist even limited African-American attempts to obtain civil rights. The boycott did have some positive consequences. It demonstrated the potential effectiveness of nonviolent protest accompanied by aggressive legal action. It also launched the public career of Martin Luther King Jr., who shortly thereafter founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to continue to organize further peaceful grassroots protests across the South, setting up the more extensive and successful efforts of the 1960s. Further reading: Branch, Taylor. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–1963. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988; Williams, Donnie. The Thunder of Angels: The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the People who Broke the Back of Jim Crow. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2006. Richard M. Filipink, Jr.
Montoneros (Argentine urban guerrillas, 1970s) In the early 1970s in response to the military dictatorship in Argentina, a number of left-wing urban guerrilla groups formed in opposition to government authority. The most audacious and active of these groups was the Montoneros, which engaged in a number of high-profile kidnappings, bank robberies, bombings, and assassinations from 1970 to 1977 before being crushed by the military as part of a broader crackdown on “subversion” and dissent in that country’s Dirty War. Most Montoneros were young, disaffected university students and would-be professionals from the urban middle class who engaged in acts of violence to advance their
political goals. Many were also women, in keeping with the sexual revolution then transforming much of North America and Europe. In previous decades, leftist guerrilla groups had formed in the Argentine backcountry, though most had had little impact on the country’s political life. These included the Tigermen (Uturuncos) in 1959, modeled on Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro’s July 26 Movement; the People’s Guerrilla Army, active in the early 1960s; and the 17th of October group, formed in 1968. In March 1970 a new group, the Argentine Liberation Front (Frente Argentino de Liberación), kidnapped the Paraguayan consul. In June 1970 another group, claiming the mantle of the deposed president Juan Perón and calling itself the Montoneros, kidnapped and executed former Argentine president Pedro E. Aramburu, in reprisal for Aramburu’s 1956 execution of the Peronist general Juan José Valle and 27 of his compatriots after a failed rebellion. By the end of 1970 at least four leftist guerrilla organizations, three Peronist and one Trostsyist, were active in Argentina, each with fewer than several hundred members. In 1971–72 the Peronist groups, active mostly in and around Buenos Aires, staged a number of sensational, Robin Hood–like operations. In addition to bank robberies and assassinations, the guerrillas kidnapped government officials, prominent businessmen, and executives of multinational corporations, who were released for cash payments to Buenos Aires’ poorest residents. In 1973 the Peronist guerrilla groups coalesced into the Montoneros, led by Mario Firmenich, leader of the original Montoneros formed in June 1970. Proclaiming traditional unions decadent and corrupt, and popular social revolution as their goal, the group aimed to precipitate a generalized crisis that would usher in a period of radical social transformation, empowering the poor and redistributing the country’s wealth in favor of workers and peasants. On June 20, 1973, during events marking Perón’s second return from exile, pitched battles broke out between the Montoneros and pro-union paramilitaries in which scores, perhaps hundreds, died (the “Ezeiza massacre”). After Perón’s reelection as president in September 1973, the Montoneros stepped up their attacks against Peronist unions, most spectacularly in their assassination of José Rucci, general secretary of the Confederación General del Trabajo. In September 1974 they received an estimated $60 million in cash and $1.2 million in charity distributed to
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the poor as ransom for the release of several prominent businessmen. The army, police, and affiliated right-wing paramilitary groups (most notably the “Triple A,” or Alianza Anticomunista Argentina) responded to the upsurge in Montonero violence with a generalized crackdown on organized dissent. Thousands were imprisoned and tortured and thousands more executed and “disappeared” in the Argentine Dirty War (1976–83). In 1976 there were an estimated 7,000 Montoneros. A year later the organization ceased to exist as a viable guerrilla force. Further reading: Gillespie, Richard. Soldiers of Perón: Argentina’s Montoneros. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982; Lewis, Paul H. Guerrillas and Generals: The “Dirty War” in Argentina. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002. Michael J. Schroeder
Morocco Following the establishment of the French protectorate over Morocco in 1912, numerous nationalist movements emerged; after World War II these parties, especially the Istiqlal (Independence) led by Allal al-Yusuf, mobilized opposition to the French regime. There was also a small urban-based Communist Party led Mehdi Ben Barka. The Sultan Muhammad Ben Yusuf, the king of the old Alaouite dynasty, supported the nationalist demands. In 1947 he gave a rousing speech in the international city of Tangier in which he pointedly did not declare his loyalty to the French. This was seen as support for the nationalist cause and was a turning point in the struggle. After riots broke out in the major port city of Casablanca, the French promptly appointed a hard-line military man to restore order. As discontent continued to escalate, the sultan demanded the establishment of his own government. In 1953 the French sent Muhammad into exile, but he did not abdicate. The French attempted to install the highly unpopular Muhammad Ben Arafa, a prince of the Glawi house, as their puppet ruler, but he barely escaped an assassination attempt by Moroccan nationalists. Violence increased, and Arafa fled. Faced with mounting violence and an ongoing war in Algeria, the French granted Morocco independence in 1956. Muhammad returned to become King Muhammad V in 1957. Morocco gradually reasserted its authority over Spanish-held territory in the north but the Spanish retained
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control over a small enclave and several offshore islands that they hold until the present day. In 1959 Tangier lost its special status and was integrated into Morocco as a free port. Although the Istiqlal remained a key force in the Cabinet, Muhammad V had widespread governmental authority and enjoyed popular support as well as religious respect based on baraka, or good fortune. After his death in 1962, his son succeeded as King Hassan II. Hassan instituted a new constitution in 1962 but continued to exercise wide executive powers. The Istiqlal split in 1959, and a new group, the Union Nationale des Forces Populaire (UNFP), supported by Ben Barka, emerged. Following increased political opposition, Hassan proclaimed a state of emergency with full legislative and executive powers in 1965. Ben Barka went into exile in France, where he was kidnapped and presumably killed with the complicity of the Moroccan government in 1965. Political demonstrations against the regime continued in major cities throughout Morocco in the late 1960s, but Hassan remained in power owing to a combination of loyal courtiers, army officers, and security police. In 1971 armed cadets stormed the royal palace during Hassan’s birthday party, but when they failed to kill the king the attempted coup collapsed. In 1972 Hassan survived an airplane attack orchestrated by the formerly loyal general Mohammad Oufkir. The coup plotters, including Oufkir, were killed or imprisoned. In spite of ongoing charges of corruption and nepotism, Hassan remained in power. Economically, Morocco was predominately an agricultural country but phosphates were its primary export and source of hard currency. Tourism was another major source of income. With a growing young population, Morocco, like many poor countries in the global south, found it increasingly difficult to provide adequate education or jobs for its youth. Many attempted to flee the poverty of the countryside by moving to the cities, where they joined the ranks of the unemployed, or by traveling to Europe as migrant workers. In the 1990s and afterward, these disaffected youth often sympathized with or joined Islamist movements. In 1975 Hassan claimed the territory of the Western Sahara, formerly held by Spain, as part of Morocco and launched the so-called “Green March” of hundreds of thousands of Moroccans to take the territory. An ongoing war ensued; although the United Nations demanded a referendum to settle the issue, Morocco has consistently delayed the election and the matter remains unresolved until the present day.
U.S. secretary of defense Caspar W. Weinberger meets with King Hassan (right) of Morocco.
Although Morocco has had some success in furthering education and welfare projects and modernizing its economy, wide disparities between urban and rural areas and differing population and tribal groups remain. Following Hassan’s death in 1999, his oldest son succeeded as King Mohammed VI. Well educated, Mohammed VI was keen to modernize the country; he also liberalized the political system, releasing many political prisoners from his father’s regime. In 2004 he also instituted a new family code to grant women more power. Islamists, many of whom opposed Morocco’s close ties with the West and the modernizing programs, remained the major opponents to King Muhammad VI’s regime. See also Islamist movements; Western Saharan War.
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Further reading: Munson, Henry. Religion and Power in Morocco. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993.; Parker, Richard B. North Africa: Regional Tensions and Strategic Concerns. Rev. ed. New York: Praeger, 1987; Waterbury, John. The Commander of the Faithful. New York: Columbia University Press, 1970; Zartman, William I., et al. Political Elites in Arab North Africa: Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and Egypt. New York: Longman, 1982. Janice J. Terry
Mossadeq, Mohammad (1882–1967) Iranian nationalist Mohammad Mossadeq led the oil nationalization movement in Iran in the early 1950s. Mirza Mohammad Khan (later Mossadeq al-Saltaneh) was born in 1882 into a wealthy aristocratic family closely connected to the royal family of the Qajar dynasty. His father, Mirza Hedayat Ashtiyani, served the Qajar government as the minister of budget and finance from 1874 to 1895. Mossadeq, who was deeply influenced by his mother’s progressive opinions about female roles in society, tried to extend the rights of women in Iran. When his father died, Mossadeq succeeded him in the family profession as a mostowfi (auditor). He was appointed chief mostowfi in the province of Khorasan at the age of 14. Mossadeq, who supported the Constitutional Revolution, was elected to the First National Assembly as a deputy from Isfahan. However, his credentials were rejected because he had not yet attained the minimum legal age to serve as a deputy in Parliament. He studied public finance in Paris and obtained a doctoral degree in law at Neuchâtel University in Switzerland in 1914. After returning to Iran, he held several important posts successively, including vice minister of finance, governor of Fars, minister of finance, governor of Azerbaijan, and foreign minister. After Reza Khan ousted the Qajar shah from the throne during the 1921 coup and established the Pahlavi dynasty in 1925, Mossadeq became a leader in the nationalist opposition to the Pahlavi dictatorship. Mossadeq was imprisoned in 1940. When Reza Shah was dethroned by the Allies in 1941 for sympathizing with the Nazis, and his son Mohammad Reza was installed as the new shah, Mossadeq was released. In 1944 Mossadeq was elected as a deputy from Tehran to the 14th Parliament. During that time, he played a significant
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role in enacting the Single-Article Bill, which forbade the government from granting foreign concessions without the approval of parliament. In October 1949 a group of politicians, university students, merchants, and guilds in the Tehran bazaar (marketplace) gathered in front of the shah’s palace to protest the rigging of the 16th parliamentary election. These protesters, led by Mossadeq, established the National Front. Under Mossadeq’s leadership, the National Front drove the movement to nationalize the British-run petroleum industry. The oil nationalization law was approved by both the Senate and Parliament in March 1951. Mossadeq was elected prime minister on April 30, 1951. The British government and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) opposed the oil nationalization law and sued the Iranian government in the International Court in the Hague. Mossadeq attempted to establish Iranian political and economic independence and to democratize the system established by the Pahlavis; he favored both the nationalization of the oil industry and domestic reforms. However, his government fell in August 1953 as the result of a coup d’état that was backed by the United States that opposed the oil nationalization and Mossadeq’s alleged communist ties. Mohammad Reza returned to power and Mossadeq was imprisoned on charges of acting against Iran. He was subsequently placed under house arrest; Mossadeq died at age 85 on March 5, 1967. He is regarded as a national hero. See also Iranian revolution. Further reading: Bill, James A. Musaddiq, Iranian Nationalism and Oil. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1988; Gasiorowski, Mark J. Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2004; Katouzian, Homa. Musaddiq and the Struggle for Power. London: I.B. Tauris, 1999. Mari Nuki
Mountbatten, Louis, Lord (earl mountbatten of Burma) (1900–1979) British political leader
Lord Louis Mountbatten was the youngest son of Prince Louis of Battenburg and Princess Victoria of Hesse. His mother, a granddaughter of Great Britain’s Queen Victoria, was the daughter of Queen Victoria’s second daughter, Princess Alice, who, in turn, had married
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Grand Duke Louis IV of Hesse. The Battenberg family was descended through morganatic marriage from the grand duke of Hesse and by Rhine. Lord Mountbatten was born on June 25, 1900, at Frogmore House, Windsor, England. His family included his sisters Princess Alice, the mother of Philip, duke of Edinburgh; Queen Louise of Sweden; and a brother, George Mountbatten, later the second marquess of Milford Haven. Following in his father’s footsteps, Mountbatten entered the navy in 1913 and saw service on the Lion and the Elizabeth during World War I. His father was first sea lord at the outbreak of conflict, but because of his German ancestry was forced to resign. AntiGerman feeling grew during the course of the war, and this led King George V to relinquish all German names and titles. Accordingly the royal family name became Windsor, and Battenburg became Mountbatten. In the interwar years, Lord Louis continued his career in the navy. He married Edwina Cynthia Ashley in 1922. Although Mountbatten’s marriage lasted until the death of his wife in 1960 and appeared a close one, there remained claims of adultery and sensational affairs on both parts throughout the course of the marriage. A captain at the start of World War II, Mountbatten commanded destroyers, losing the destroyer Kelly in battle off Crete in 1940. During these early years of conflict he saw action in the North Sea, the Mediterranean, and the Western Approaches. He became a commodore in 1941 and rose to become, in a relatively short period, chief of combined operations. In this post he took on a key role in planning for the Allied invasion of continental Europe. His appointment as supreme allied commander, South East Asia Command, in 1943 gave him the rank of acting admiral. Consequently he was instrumental in Allied operations to drive the Japanese from Burma, and in 1945 he accepted the Japanese surrender in Malaya. His command required diplomatic skills to balance the different Allied commanders in this theatre of operations. Mountbatten’s distinguished wartime service was awarded with nobility, becoming first Viscount Mountbatten of Burma in 1946 and then Earl Mountbatten of Burma and Baron Romsey in 1947. In the same year Mountbatten was appointed viceroy of India, and after partition he remained as governor-general until 1948. This meant overseeing the Indian and Pakistan drive to independence, and in this process he became a close friend of the Indian National Congress leader Jawaharlal Nehru. Apparently this close relationship did not extend to Pakistan’s Muslim League leader
Mohammed Ali Jinnah. The partition of India was not an easy affair, and much violence and death came as a result. Some critics held Mountbatten responsible for these difficulties because he rushed partition and independence without proper security arrangements being in place. After India, Mountbatten remained in the navy and performed a number of critical duties. He became first sea lord in 1955 and served in the important post of chief of defense staff from 1959 to 1965. Mountbatten was assassinated by the Provisional Irish Republican Army on August 27, 1979, while on vacation in County Sligo in the Republic of Ireland. A bomb was planted on his boat. The explosion killed his eldest daughter’s mother-in-law, the Dowager Baroness Brabourne; his elder daughter’s fourth son, Nicholas Knatchbull; and Paul Maxwell, a crew member. The murder was widely condemned by both the president and the prime minister of Ireland. Mountbatten was buried in Romsey Abbey. The investigation that followed led to the arrest and conviction of Thomas McMahon in 1979 for the murders; although given a life sentence, he was released from prison following the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Further reading: Butler, David. Lord Mountbatten: The Last Viceroy. London: Methen, 1985; Evans, William. The Mountbatten Years. London: Headline Books, 1990; Terraine, John. Life and Times of Lord Mountbatten. Austin: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980; Ziegler, Philip. Mountbatten: The Official Biography. London: Orion Publishing, 2001. Theodore W. Eversole
Mugabe, Robert
(1924– ) Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe was educated in mission schools and earned a degree in higher education from Fort Hare University in South Africa. As a young man, he joined the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) with Joshua Nkomo, but split off to form the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), which led a guerrilla warfare struggle against the white-dominated Ian Smith regime in Rhodesia. After protracted negotiations with Great Britain, Zimbabwe finally attained full independence under a one-person, one-vote rubric in 1979. Mugabe initially led a coalition government with his rival Nkomo, but gradually evolved a one-party state under his sole rule. In the 1980s Mugabe was hailed as an African statesman
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by Western governments. Zimbabwe had a biracial government and made economic progress; Mugabe’s regime also was successful in raising educational levels for boys and girls, with one of the highest literacy rates in Africa. In the 1990s Mugabe became increasingly dictatorial and refused to cede power even in face of the 2000 elections, when the opposition electoral vote was clearly the majority. Amid widespread charges of corruption and vote rigging, Mugabe’s ZANU party declared victory in the spring 2005 elections. Mugabe also retained the right personally to select two dozen members of parliament. He also ordered the confiscation of white-owned land that was then distributed to his supporters. On the pretext of urban renewal, he also tore down urban shanty towns that were centers of political opposition to his regime. The resultant political crisis contributed to economic chaos and declining productivity as well as wide-spread condemnation from European nations, but, in spite of his advanced age, Mugabe announced his determination to remain in power, despite on apparent victory by the opposition in the national March 29, 2008, elections. See also Rhodesia/Zimbabwe independence movements. Further reading: Chan, Stephen. Robert Mugabe: A Life of Power and Violence. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003; Meredith, Martin. Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe. Boulder, CO: Perseus Books, 2003. Janice J. Terry
Musharraf, Pervez (1943– ) Pakistani leader
Born in Delhi on August 11, 1943, to an educated middle-class family, Pervez Musharraf immigrated with his family to Pakistan during the Indian partition later that decade. Musharraf’s education included enrollment at the Pakistan Military Academy, the Staff College in Quetta, and the National Defence College. He rose very quickly through the Pakistani military ranks despite the fact that he and his family were not members of the Punjab upper class, which dominated the Pakistani officer corps. His military career began in 1964 with various commands that included artillery and infantry units and then leadership over commando units. Musharraf graduated from the Royal College of Defence Studies in the United Kingdom before being named the director-general of the mili-
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tary by Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and he participated in the Indo-Pakistani Wars of 1965 and 1971. In 1998 Musharraf became the army chief two days after the resignation of General Jehangir Karamat, the first army chief of staff to ever step down. Some analysts suggested that the appointment of the non-Punjab Musharraf by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was designed to prevent him from becoming too powerful. But Musharraf, along with other military officers, soon became frustrated with the prime minister’s diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis with India. A crisis that resulted would end Pakistan’s democratic experiment. General Musharraf took over the government of Pakistan in a bloodless coup on October 12, 1999, and became the 12th president of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan on June 20, 2001. The coup began when Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif attempted to fire Musharraf and replace him with the director of the Pakistani Intelligence Services, or the ISI, Khwaja Ziauddin. Out of the country when the crisis began, Musharraf immediately returned to Pakistan, and, with the support of senior military officials, Musharraf landed and assumed control of the government, ultimately exiling Sharif. He then suspended the national assembly. In April 2002 Musharraf held a national referendum in order to legitimize his rule, which was extended for five years. The majority of Pakistani political parties, however, boycotted the election, and voter participation was believed to have been about 3 percent. In October 2002 general elections were held, and the pro-Musharraf PML-Q party won a number of seats. On December 14, 2003, a bomb exploded just minutes after Musharraf’s motorcade crossed a bridge in Rawalpindi. Eleven days later another attempt to assassinate him resulted in the death of 16 people nearby. Musharraf temporarily broke the deadlock in December of 2004 in order to pass the Seventeenth Amendment, which legalized his 1999 coup. In January 2004 another referendum extended his presidency until October 2007. Several significant issues marked Musharraf’s presidency. After the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States Musharraf allied with the United States in the War on Terrorism. Radicals within Pakistan continued to target him for assassination. In November Musharraf declared emergency rule and dismissed the Supreme Court. He arrested opposition leaders and restricted media. In late November his new, personally appointed Supreme Court dropped all challenges to his legitimacy as president, and Musharraf renounced his military role. On December 15, 2007, Musharraf ended the state of emergency, ahead of the scheduled January 8 elections. The December 27 assassination of Benazir Bhutto, however, intesified the opposition to Musharraf,
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and his party was soundly defeated in delayed parliamentary elections in February. Further reading: Bennett Jones, Owen. Pakistan: Eye of the Storm. Lahore: Vanguard, 2002; Kukreja, V. and M. Singh, eds. Pakistan: Democracy, Development and Security Issues. Karachi: Paramount Publishing, 2005; Weaver, Mary Anne. Pakistan: In the Shadow of Jihad and Afghanistan. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2002. Matthew H. Wahlert
music Since 1950 there have been many styles of music and large numbers of important musicians who have influenced people throughout the world. It has also been a period where—although concerts continued to be held—for many people, music was heard on the radio, television, played on record players, tape recorders, video players, Cd players, and also on Walkmans, MP3 players, and iPods. The use of juke boxes has gradually fallen from favor; “musac” was installed in many hotels, shopping centers and supermarkets, and during the 1990s there was the emergence—initially in Japan, and later elsewhere— of karaoke. Many of the major companies—HMV, Sony, CBS, and others—have been quick to move with the changes in technology. With large numbers of countries becoming independent, there has also been the composing of many national anthems, and the active encouragement of local music, both traditional and contemporary. The period from 1950 also saw the emergence of film music by many famous film music composers, including Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897–1957), and also other musicians and singers. There have also been more developments, including the increasing importance of music in schools, with most primary and secondary schools around the world teaching music, and many millions of students learning to play musical instruments, with the mass production of quality instruments reducing the costs of acquiring a good instrument. classical and stage music Classical music during this period has remained strong, with the well-known musical works from early periods—by Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner and others—remaining popular; indeed Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” has become the European anthem. In addition there have been new classical composers, such as Benjamin Britten (later Baron Britten of Aldeburgh; 1913–
1976), then Dmitry Shostakovich (1906–1975), with George Gershwin (1898–1937) contributing “classical jazz.” There have also been many great classical soloists of the period, with a few to remember being violinists Yehudi Menuhin (later Lord Menuhin of Stoke d’Abernon; 1916–99), David Oistrakh (1908–74), Alfredo Campoli (1906–91), and Nigel Kennedy (b. 1956); cellists Jacqueline du Pres (1945–87), Pablo Casals (1876–1973); Mstislav Rostropovich (1927, 2007); flautist James Galway (b. 1939); and classical guitarist John Williams (b. 1941). There were also some others such as pianist Richard Clayderman (b. 1953), who sold tens of thousands of recordings. In addition there have been important conductors of classical music such as Herbert von Karajan (1908–89) of the Vienna State Orchestra, Daniel Barenboim (b. 1942); Andre Previn (b. 1929), Antal Dorati (1906–88); Vladimir Askenazy (b. 1937), Zubin Mehta (b. 1936); Raphael Kubelak (1914–96), and Leonard Bernstein (1918–90), who was also a composer of West Side Story (1957) and much else. Mention should also be made of miminalist compositions during the 1960s made by Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass, with early 21st-century composers being Oliver Knussen, Thomas Adès, and Michael Daugherty. Singing, which had been very popular before the 1950s, had a resurgence of interest with the Eurovision Song Contest and other events. The Australian-born operatic soprano and concert singer Joan Sutherland (b. 1926) is internationally acclaimed for her coloratura roles; and the New Zealander Dame Kiri Te Kanawa (b. 1944) is also a popular opera singer. Other operatic singers who have been famous include the Three Tenors: Luciano Pavarotti (1935–2007); Placido Domingo (b. 1941); and José Carreras (b. 1946). Singers include British duos Pearl Carr and Teddy Johnson, and Lennie Peters (1939–92) and Dianne Lee (b. 1950). There has also been a revival of interest in musicals with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s (b. 1948) Jesus Christ Superstar (1971), Evita (1978), Cats (1981), and The Phantom of the Opera (1986) playing to packed audiences. Cats became the longest-running musical in the history of British theater, and it only closed on Broadway, New York, in 2000 after 7,485 performances. Composer Richard Rodgers (1902–79) and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein (1895–1960) were extremely influential. Famous singers include Bing Crosby (1903–77); Cliff Richard (b. 1940), who operated with the backing band “The Shadows”; Frank Sinatra (1915–98); Tommy Steele (b. 1936); Liberace (1919–87); singer and songwriter Barry Manilow (b. 1943); Elton John
(b. 1947), who was also a pianist and one of the most popular entertainers of the late 20th century; and American Eartha Kitt (b. 1927), who became famous for her sultry vocal style. Protest music has had an important role, with many lyric writers and singers having a major political message. They include the Australian Peter Garrett (b. 1953) of Midnight Oil, now a politician, and Raul Alarcon, who led the “No Waltz” in a protest against the Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, adapting music from Blue Danube by Strauss. Others include American singer Joan Baez (b. 1941), who protested against the Vietnam War, and Irish “mouth musician” Sinead O’Connor (b. 1966). Some protest groups came together at Woodstock, New York, in 1969. Folk music has long been popular throughout the world and has had a revival, with traditional folk music from Bob Dylan (b. 1941) and other singer-songwriters attracting large audiences. fusion The early 1950s saw country and bluegrass music come into the mainstream. At the same time, rock and roll was taking shape from the musical intersection of blues, rhythm and blues, and some injections of that same country music. Though at times the listeners and marketers of country and rock music would seem demographically and geographically different, as the decades progressed musical creativity would spark lively interconnections and fusions between the styles. With each new generation of musicians and listeners through the latter half of the 20th century and the start of the 21st, country and rock would each return to their beginnings in the music of earlier days. In the 1950s and 1960s much of that earlier music was being brought back to popular attention by the artists of the folk music revival. Artists such as Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, the Weavers, and Leadbelly—who had taken up music as a tool of social protest during the Great Depression and World War II—would inspire newer generations of singers, songwriters, and players. These musicians would find in music a tool not only for political comment but for personal introspection. Though it is often of a much rawer and rowdier nature, such personal emotional expression is a defining factor in the blues. Many folk revival musicians of the 1960s revered blues heroes such as Son House and Robert Johnson. A decade earlier in the Mississippi Delta, where that music had its genesis, a white singer had started making records that would cross the
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boundaries of country, blues, pop, and folk in a way no one had done before. His name was Elvis Presley. Presley grew up poor in rural Mississippi. He was working as a truck driver in Memphis when he stopped by Sun Studios one day to record a birthday song for his mother. Studio owner Sam Phillips heard in Presley’s style something he’d been on the look out for: a white singer who had the sound of the black Delta in his voice. Presley’s first single, released in 1954, was a textbook exercise in fusion and changes to come: The A side was “That’s All Right Mama,” written by blues musician Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, while the B side was bluegrass giant Bill Monroe’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky.” Presley’s early recordings are some of the strongest bridges between folk, blues, country, pop, and rock and roll. His voice, too, remained distinctive, however far from the energy of those roots he sometimes strayed. An occasional drop-in at Presley’s early Memphis sessions was another singer with a distinctive voice who would go on to become a towering and long-lived presence in country, folk, gospel, and rock and roll. Johnny Cash’s authentic yet mysterious image as The Man in Black was as unique as his music, and his troubled life as well as his religious commitment drew listeners on both sides of that divide to his music, which ranged from the folk-tinged “Folsom Prison Blues” to the fiery “I Walk the Line” to the roots-rock hybrid “Get Rhythm.” That fusion of blues, country, rock, and gospel with an uptempo danceable beat appealed to teenagers across the country and across the races in the 1950s, but by the end of that decade it had begun to die off as a style. It would be a temporary lull, though, as San Antonio native and California transplant Rosie Flores and others would revive it beginning in the 1980s. Another singer with a memorable voice and strong writing style had a far briefer career than either Presley or Cash, but his music did as much as theirs to intermingle the rivers of sound that flowed from country, rock, and folk during that decade and beyond. Hank Williams fused blues and longing and honky-tonk country melodies so successfully that his rural-themed images helped his music cross over to pop and rock listeners. Songs such as “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” and “Hey Good Lookin’” became standards in the 1950s and remained so well into the 21st century, for audiences across pop, bluegrass, and country. The late 1950s and early 1960s saw country music become sugar-coated with strings and choral arrangements, in what was called the Nashville sound. Producers there were going after a pop market that was mired in productions that valued sound over substance. These
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producers had their successes, and some good or at least interesting music came out of them—Patsy Cline crossed over to pop success, as did Roger Miller and Jeannie C. Riley—but it was not long before restless offshoots of both country and pop began taking the sounds in new directions. In pop, the motor city of Detroit saw the birth of the Motown sound and the popularity of artists such as Smokey Robinson, the Temptations, and the Supremes, and the beginning of musical integration as white listeners came in droves to hear black artists. In Memphis, Stax records and Booker T and the MGs proved vital forces. the songwriter Many artists drew from the folk music revival and expanded on it. The strongest of these were the evolution of the folk songwriter from a balladeer who told stories of events or history to one who wrote and sang powerfully of his or her own emotions, and the parallel return of musician as social rebel and commentator on social injustice. The decade of the 1960s saw the emergence of the songwriter as a major and lasting force in country and popular music. Record buyers and concert goers began to notice and remember who wrote the songs. The time was filled with good, passionate, and original tunesmiths such as Tom Paxton and Ian and Sylvia Tyson, as well as with singers and players whose gift was to interpret the songs of others. Bob Dylan’s poetic, iconoclastic imagery was for many the defining music of the decade. Although Dylan was not a powerhouse singer himself, the power of his ideas nonetheless drew people to buy his records and come to his concerts. Fellow artists covered his songs as well, with the top three women artists of the folk music revival, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and Carolyn Hester, among those who made Dylan’s songs an integral part of their work. The Minnesota-born Dylan counted dust-bowl folk troubadour Woody Guthrie as an essential hero, and like Guthrie, Dylan was not willing to be bound by some-one else’s idea of who or what he should be as an artist. In 1965 he played an electric guitar onstage at the famed Newport Folk Festival. That shook things up at the time and raised questions about the limits and bounds of folk, rock, and country that still prompt vital discussion today. Gram Parsons was another songwriter of the 1960s with a legacy as a writer and as a performer who blurred the boundaries between rock and country, a legacy that has endured despite his early death. Raised in Florida
and Georgia, the Harvard dropout found his way out to California not long after Dylan’s tradition-breaking set on the stage at Newport. Parsons joined the Byrds, a rock band that quickly became more folk and country oriented under Parsons’s influence. The list of songs Parsons had written already included the country and folk classics “Brass Buttons” and “Luxury Liner.” The Byrds’ 1968 release, Sweetheart of the Rodeo, contained another, “Hickory Wind,” which is perhaps the song that best shows Parsons’s love for and understanding of traditional country. Country music was a door Parsons opened for Emmylou Harris, who was his duet partner during the last years of his life. Harris was singing at folk clubs in the Washington, D.C., area when Parsons first heard her. A year later, with a recording contract for his solo debut in hand, he hired her to sing on the project. Two years later, a return to the drug and alcohol abuse he thought he’d conquered led to Parsons’s death. While Harris was forging ways to stay true to her vision of country music, rocker Bruce Springsteen was moving closer to folk, and country artists such as Uncle Tupelo, the Tractors, and singer-songwriter Marty Stuart—who got his start in bluegrass—were moving toward rock rhythms and styles. The lines between roots rock and alternative country in band settings continued to blur, defined more by volume and dress, and occasionally by lyrical content, than by differences in melody. Singers and songwriters like Stuart, Gretchen Peters, and Mark Selby, while rooted in country, also found chart success with songs recorded by pop, blues, and rock artists. Peters, a thoughtful songwriter and gifted singer who made the move from Colorado to Nashville in the mid-1980s, just about the time Marty Stuart was scoring chart hits, wrote music that found her equally at home performing at the Folk Alliance convention, cowriting with rocker Bryan Adams, and seeing her tunes cut by country new traditionalist Patty Loveless, blues rocker Bonnie Raitt, and pop country superstar Shania Twain. Though she recorded one of Gretchen Peters’s songs on her first release, Shania Twain soon turned to making recordings of songs she wrote herself or with her husband, rock producer Robert John Lange. The more rock-laced they got the more controversy followed her country music career, but it was a clearly a combination that fueled millions of dollars in music sales and brought many listeners into the country section of record stores who had never ventured there before. Alison Krauss, known for the clarity of her voice and her wide-ranging song selection, might have seemed to
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be going in a far different direction than Twain, but the two had more in common than sharing a stage. Twain reached pop and rock audiences with a blend of lyrics and style that crossed both those boundaries. Krauss built her foundation on traditional bluegrass and continued to play it, but took her listeners to true bluegrass versions of pop and rock songs they would likely not have encountered. It is a characteristic that has marked all the artists who have been involved in the fusion of country music and rock: a musical imagination that can see and hear beyond borders, and an understanding of what can be changed and what can remain the same, where the heart of the music lies. The period since 1950 has seen a massive increase in popular music, or “Pop Music,” as it has come to be known. The earliest type was probably the blues, evolving from African-American traditions and gaining popularity in the United States during the 1930s, with jazz taking over as an art form characterized by blue notes and improvisation. By the 1950s, records of jazz music were sold throughout the world. Jazz musicians from 1950 include many who played from the 1920s and 1930s: Louis Armstrong (1901–71), Count Basie (1904–84), and Duke Ellington (1899–1974). There have also been a number of major political figures who have played jazz in public, including Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia, King Rama IX (Bhumibol) of Thailand, and former U.S. president Bill Clinton. popular styles Country music, often known as country and western music, officially started in Tennessee in 1927 with Jimmie Rodgers, and became popular with the increased sale of records. This style of music remained popular in the United States and in Australia. Australian country musicians include Slim Dusty (1927–2003); Australian country and western music enthusiasts meet regularly at Tamworth, New South Wales, each year. Although the rock and roll period is usually regarded as the late 1950s and the 1960s, some of the traditions go back to the late 1920s. Nevertheless, most of the important rock and roll musicians date from the 1950s: Chuck Berry (b. 1926), Fats Domino (b. 1928), and Elvis Presley (1935–77) being three of the earliest well-known names in this style, with Presley’s title of “King of Rock and Roll.” He recorded over 450 original songs, not least “Blue Suede Shoes” (1956), “Jailhouse Rock” (1958), “Little Sister” (1961), “Viva Las Vegas” (1964), and “Suspicious Minds” (1969). The Beatles, which included Paul McCartney (b. 1942), John Lennon (1940–80), George Harrison
Dubbed the “King of Rock ‘n Roll,” Elvis Presley came to prominence in the United States in the 1950s.
(1943–2001), and Ringo Starr (b. 1940), was the most famous of the early bands. Jim Morrison (1943–71), of The Doors, used tempo and lyrics that had the ability to tap the mood of American youth in 1967. He left the United States in 1971 to move to Paris, where he died three months later. Other pop groups include Abba, Adam and the Ants, the Boomtown Rats, the Dead Kennedys, NXS, The Osmonds, The Rolling Stones, the Spice Girls, U2, and The Who. The British television series Top of the Pops helped promote many of the groups, and also a large number of prominent pop stars including Bono (b. 1960) from U2, Bob Geldof (b. 1951), Boy George (b. 1961), Gary Glitter (b. 1944), rock guitarist and singer Jimi Hendrix (1942–70), Michael Jackson (b. 1958), Mick Jagger (b. 1943), Jonathan King (b. 1944), Madonna (b. 1958), and Marilynn (b. 1962). Geldof
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became even more famous with his Live Aid (1985) musical recordings, which raised money for his Ethiopian famine appeal; and Madonna has been involved in songwriting, acting in films, and many other parts of the entertainment industry. Progressive rock came about largely from the 1960s in Britain and also in Europe, with bands such as Alice Cooper, led by Alice Cooper (b. 1948), Pink Floyd (made famous with “Dark Side of the Moon”), and Genesis. The mid-1970s saw the emergence of punk rock, with hard rock music played at fast speeds with simple lyrics and fewer than three chords. The groups include Television, the Ramones, and the Sex Pistols—the latter with Sid Vicious (1957–79) and Johnny Rotten (b. 1956) gaining notoriety. These generally used electric guitars, electric bass, and drums—with other subtypes developing, such as grunge, with Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain (1967–94), pop punk; Emo (emotionally charged punk rock); and Gothic rock. There were also heavy metal groups, which tended to have aggressive and driving rhythms, with the music highly amplified and distorted, and grandiose lyrics, with many of the audience involved in “head banging.” Groups included A.C./D.C., Aerosmith, Black Sabbath (starring Ozzy Osbourne, b. 1948), Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Meatloaf, and The Sisters of Mercy. Other types of music of the period from 1950 include funk, hip hop, salsa, soul, and disco. Some early developments in African-American music included gospel and also, in the Caribbean, steel bands. Funk music originated from African Americans, with the most famous musician in this style being James Brown (1933–2006), the “Godfather of Soul.” Hip hop music tends to have rapping and largely came about with disc jockeys trying to repeat the percussion rhythms of funk or disco songs. Salsa music largely came from the Caribbean and became popular in many Latin countries in Central and South America and in the Mediterranean. It is also very popular among Cuban exiles in the United States. Soul music grew out of the African-American gospel singing and blues tradition from the 1950s, with musicians such as Aretha Franklin becoming well known. Disco music, for dance, essentially drew from funk, salsa, and from the Caribbean soul music, being popular in night clubs. Reggae music, some associated with the Rastafarian movement, has also become popular in Britain and other places with large expatriate West
Indian communities. The most famous reggae musician, Bob Marley (1945–81), incorporated a rock-influenced hybrid, making Marley an international superstar. In the 1990s, there was a development of New Age music, representing some form of connection to Mother Earth or Gaia. This included the sound of animals, as well as quiet songs that had the idea of aiding meditation and helping energize yoga sessions, having a calming influence, and representing essentially a cultural backlash and alternative to punk rock and heavy metal. This has also been reflected in a rise in interest in choir music by the King’s College Choir from Cambridge, England; the Mormon Tabernacle Choir from Utah; Welsh male voice choirs; and British marching bands from the coal mines in the north. There has also been a resurgence of the massive Estonian choirs, and renewed interest in Australian Aboriginal music, with the Yothu Yindi band being probably the best-known group. There has, similarly, been a revival of Zulu and other African chants, and also music from remote places such as harp music from Paraguay and Tibetan music. There has also been much music around the world often collectively known as world music, for instance, in Greece, Nana Mouskouri (b. 1934). There have also been many internationally acclaimed African singers and musicians, the most famous probably being Ali Farka Touré (1939–2006) from Mali. There have also been many Algerian and Egyptian singers. In India, music played on a sitar by Ravi Shankar and others has been popular in its own right and in Bollywood films. In China, Chinese operatic music has remained, in spite of China becoming communist—although there were major changes in Chinese music during the Cultural Revolution from 1966, with Jiang Qing (Madam Mao) taking part in promoting new revolutionary themes in music. Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, Gamelan music in Java and Bali continues, and there has been much interest in pop music, with “45” records of the music of Sim Sisamouth of Cambodia and others being popular during the early 1970s. Further reading: Hartog, Howard, ed. European Music in the Twentieth Century. London: Kegan Paul, 1957; Kennedy, Michael. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music. London: Oxford University Press, 1980; Westrup, J. A., and F. L. I. Harrison, Collins Music Encyclopedia. London: Collins, 1988. Justin Corfield
N Namibia Namibia’s government is a multiparty, multiracial democracy. The country is bounded on the north by Angola and Zambia, on the east by Botswana and South Africa, on the south by South Africa, and on the west by the Atlantic Ocean. The total area of Namibia is 824,269 square kilometers. Windhoek is the capital and the main city. The population was estimated at about 2 million in 2005. The dominant religion is Christianity, mostly Lutheran, with English and Afrikaans as the common languages. Namibia spent much of the 20th century under colonial rule. As South West Africa, it was a possession of Germany. From 1904 to 1906 the Namibians rose against their German rulers. The rebellion was crushed, and most of the indigenous people were stripped of their land. On July 19, 1915, the last German troops surrendered to the South African expeditionary corps at Khorab, and the South African military occupation of Namibia began. Namibia was seen as a valuable asset to whoever controlled it because of its mineral wealth and agricultural potential. On December 17, 1920, South Africa received official approval from the League of Nations to rule Namibia under a “C” mandate. This type of mandate was designated for former German territories that were not considered to be likely to pass into independence in the foreseeable future. It led to decades of tension. Although the South Africans publicly claimed that the mandate should be viewed as a position of great trust
and honor, in practice it offered profits and advantages to South African nationals. For all essential purposes, Namibia had been annexed to South Africa, with the interests of Namibians subordinate to those of whites. The South-West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO), a Marxist guerrilla group founded in 1960, began fighting for Namibia’s independence in 1966. In 1966 the United Nations (UN) passed Resolution 2145, which revoked South Africa’s mandate and changed the country’s name to Namibia. The UN brokered a peace agreement in 1977 in which South Africa accepted UN control over Namibia. Only in 1988, however, did South Africa agree to withdraw from Namibia. The new government held UN-supervised elections in 1989, which SWAPO won decisively. Sam Nujomo, one of the leaders of the independence movement, became Namibia’s first president. After independence, the government pursued a policy of compromise with opposition groups and worked to address racial inequalities. There is an extreme disparity between the income levels of blacks and whites. However, the living standards of blacks have been steadily improving, and the major economic resources in the country are no longer controlled exclusively by whites. The country’s modern market sector produces most of its wealth, while a traditional subsistence agricultural sector supports most of its labor force. The principal exports are diamonds, copper, uranium, gold, lead, cattle, and fish. Ranching is still controlled largely by white citizens and foreign interests. In other industries—notably mining, fishing, and tourism—the participation of indigenous entrepreneurs has 303
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been increased to provide economic opportunities for blacks. The unemployment rate of nearly 40 percent in 2000 primarily affected the black majority. Namibia struggled to bring equality to its indigenous population. Racially, in 2005, black Africans made up 87.5 percent of the population, with white Africans numbering 6 percent and people of mixed race making up 6.5 percent. By law, all indigenous groups participate equally in decisions affecting their lands, cultures, traditions, and allocations of natural resources. However, Namibia’s indigenous citizens were unable to fully exercise these rights as a result of minimal access to education, limited economic opportunities under colonial rule, and their relative isolation. Virtually all of the country’s minorities are represented in Parliament, in senior positions in the cabinet, and at other levels of government. The San, also known as Bushmen, are particularly disadvantaged. The government took numerous measures to end societal discrimination against the San. However, many San children do not attend school, making advancement difficult. The future of Namibia remained in doubt at the start of the 21st century. The spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) held the possibility of devastating the country. Over 20 percent of Namibian adults were infected with HIV. Additionally the presence of numerous refugees from nearby war-torn nations held the potential to drag down the economy and involve Namibians in cross-border conflicts. Desertification, land degradation, and wildlife poaching were likely to remain issues of concern in the foreseeable future. Further reading: CIDMAA (Centre d’information et de documentation sur le Mozambique et l’Afrique australe). Towards Namibian Independence: Prospects for Development and Cooperation. Montreal: Canadian Council for International Cooperation, 1984; Jaster, Robert S. South Africa in Namibia: The Botha Strategy. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1985; Rotberg, Robert I. Namibia: Political and Economic Prospects. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1983. Steven Dieter
Nasser, Gamal Abdel
(1918–1970) Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser led the 1952 Egyptian revolution that overthrew the corrupt and ineffective monar-
Gamal Abdel Nasser (center left) led the 1952 Egyptian revolution that overthrew the corrupt monarchy of King Farouk.
chy of King Farouk. Nasser was born into a workingclass family in Asyut province. His father was a postal clerk. Nasser graduated from the Royal Military Academy in Cairo and served in the Sudan. He fought in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War at Falluja, where Egyptian forces held out against Israel until the war’s end. After the 1948 war, Nasser and other junior officers blamed King Farouk for the war’s substandard weaponry and lack of military strategy. Nasser was one of the founders of the secret Free Officers group that was determined to oust Farouk and set Egypt on a different path. Although the older and better-known Brigadier-General Muhammad Naguib was put forward to the public as the head of the officers’ group, Nasser was in fact the acknowledged leader. He was known for carefully listening to all viewpoints and then making decisions. On July 22, 1952, the Free Officers overthrew the monarchy in a practically bloodless coup d’état. A Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) was established with Naguib as its head. Nasser and Naguib clashed over whether to keep a parliamentary system or to establish a one-party state with populist support, a course Nasser favored. The majority of the officers favored Nasser, and a single party, the Liberation Rally, was established in 1953. After a failed assassination attempt on Nasser in 1954, the Muslim
Brotherhood, with whom Naguib had close ties, was banned, and Naguib was removed from power. A new constitution was implemented in 1956 and Nasser was elected president by a huge majority of Egyptian voters. He was twice reelected to the position. A highly charismatic figure and a brilliant speaker in colloquial Arabic, Nasser was extremely popular with the majority of Egyptians and among average Arabs everywhere. Not an ideologue, Nasser was a pragmatic political leader who sought to develop Egypt economically and socially. He moved toward socialism and the Soviet Union after his requests for military aid had been rebuffed by the United States. His regime jailed members of both the Egyptian Communist Party and the Muslim Brotherhood on the right. After attending the Bandung Conference in 1955, Nasser joined with Jawaharlal Nehru of India and Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia in championing positive neutralism, in which Third World nations would not forge solid alliances with either the United States or the Soviet Union in the cold war but would instead act in their own best interests. Neither of the superpowers liked this approach, but the United States was particularly hostile to it. Steering a neutral course, Nasser opposed the Western-led CENTO/Baghdad Pact and opposed Arab regimes such as the Hashemite monarchies in Iraq and Jordan and the conservative, extremely pro-Western Saudi Arabian monarchy. Nasser also spoke of Egypt belonging to three circles: the Arab, African, and Islamic worlds. Under Nasser, Egypt became a center for African and Arab political leaders and students. Although he was personally a devout Muslim, Nasser was committed to secular government and persecuted Islamists, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood, which sought to establish a state based on Muslim religious law and practice. Like all Arab leaders, Nasser supported the Palestinian cause and their right to self-determination. He permitted some fedayeen (self-sacrificers) guerrilla attacks from the Egyptian-administered Gaza Strip in Israel, but he also recognized the superiority of Israel’s military. Consequently he initially sought, through back channels, to negotiate settlements to the conflict with Israel. Israel insisted on face-to-face negotiations, and the attempts all failed. In 1956 after the United States had refused to grant aid for building the Aswa¯n Dam, Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. The nationalization led to the 1956 Arab-Israeli War, in which Great Britain, France, and Israel jointly attacked Egypt. The war was a mili-
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tary loss for Egypt but a political victory after which Nasser became indisputably the most popular man in the entire Arab world. During the so-called Arab cold war Nasser’s influence dominated the liberal, progressive, and socialist governments in Syria and elsewhere, versus the conservative pro-Western monarchies, including Jordan and Saudi Arabia. With the formation of the United Arab Republic of Egypt and Syria in 1958, Nasser perhaps reached the peak of his popularity. Following the devastating military losses in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Nasser accepted responsibility and resigned. Massive and generally spontaneous public demonstrations calling for his return led him to resume the Egyptian presidency, but he never regained the unquestioning support throughout the Arab world that he had previously enjoyed. In 1970 Nasser was called upon to mediate a truce between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and King Hussein of Jordan in the bloody war between the two. Shortly thereafter he suffered a massive heart attack, in part brought on by the tensions of the negotiation, and died in late September. Although Nasser was mistrusted and opposed in most of the West and Israel, millions of mourning Egyptians joined his funeral cortege. The legacy of Nasserism, secular pan-Arab nationalism, and state-directed socialism, spread throughout most of the Arab world during Nasser’s lifetime, but declined and, except in Lebanon, largely diminished after his death. See also Islamist movements. Further reading: Heikal, Mohamed H. Nasser: The Cairo Documents. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1973; Nasser, Gamal Abdel. The Philosophy of Revolution. Buffalo, NY: Economica Books, 1959; Woodward, Peter. Nasser. London: Longman, 1992. Janice J. Terry
Ne Win
(1911–2002) Burmese ruler U Ne Win was one of the central figures in 20th-century Burmese history and bears a heavy responsibility for creating one of the most vicious, despotic regimes of the modern world. Ne Win was born into a middle-class family in Burma as it was becoming more firmly integrated into the British Empire. His original name was Shu Maung, and he
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studied at University College, Rangoon. When Japanese troops invaded Burma in World War II, he was one of many Burmese who welcomed their defeat of the British. He became one of the “30 Comrades” who received secret military training from the Japanese and subsequently led the Burma Independence Army (BIA) into Rangoon. By this time, he had changed his name to Ne Win, or Brilliant Sun. However, he subsequently became disillusioned with Japanese rule and, together with Aung San, nationalist leader of the Burmese, he switched the allegiance of the BIA to the Allied forces. When Burma won independence in 1948, he was appointed to command the military forces of the country and played an important role in dealing with the conflict between the central government and ethnic minority groups. U Nu was ruling the country during the early postindependence years as head of the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL), which had been created by Aung San. However, the gradual breakdown of unity within the AFPFL led U Nu to invite Ne Win and his Burmese Socialist Party to form a caretaker government. Ne Win yielded power at the 1960 general election but then seized power in 1962 on the grounds that the policies of U Nu’s new government had led to a renewal of fighting and religious conflict. As ruler, Ne Win announced the Burmese Way of Socialism, which combined elements of socialism, antiimperialism, and forced puritanism. The results were increasingly disastrous for Burma’s economy and society. Despite progressive strengthening of control over power, intensive censorship, isolationism, and mass arrests, his government was never fully able to suppress the opposition. The international community was critical of his rule, but he was able to gain support from China to maintain his rule. As time went on his personal idiosyncrasies became more prominent, which included increasing reliance on mysticism and superstition. One bizarre move was his insisting that all currency be issued in denominations divisible by nine or in other numbers he considered to be auspicious. In 1987 rioting intensified across the country and led to Ne Win’s resignation the following year. Power passed to the State Law and Order Restoration Committee (SLORC), which renamed the country Myanmar. Ne Win maintained some behind-the-scenes role in the government. Further reading: Alamgir, Jalal. “Against the Current: the Survival of Authoritarianism in Burma.” Pacific Affairs 70, no. 3 (Autumn 1997); Callahan, Mary P. Making Enemies: War and State Building in Burma. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Uni-
versity Press, 2006; Maung, Mya. “The Burma Road from the Union of Burma to Myanmar.” Asian Survey 30, no. 6 (January 1990). John Walsh
Nehru, Jawaharlal
(1889–1964) Indian leader Jawaharlal Nehru came from a distinguished Kashmiri Brahmin family. His father, Motilal Nehru (1861– 1931), was a successful lawyer who joined the Indian National Congress (INC), becoming its president in 1920. The elder Nehru founded a nationalist newspaper named The Independent and was elected to the Indian Legislative Assembly in accordance with the India Act (or Mongatu-Chelmsford Reform of 1919) between 1923 and 1924, and in 1926. He was also the author of the 1918 Nehru Report, which advocated dominion status for India. Jawaharlal Nehru was educated at Harrow and Cambridge University in England, returning to India in 1912. He had a brief career as a barrister but soon gave up the legal profession and joined the Indian National Congress. He became a follower of Mohandas Gandhi, accompanying him in civil disobedience campaigns for self-government for India and serving many terms in jail. He rose quickly in the Congress, becoming leader of its left wing, its secretary between 1929 and 1939, and also its president. He used five months of internment in Ahmadnagar Fort in 1944 to write a book titled The Discovery of India that explored India’s cultural heritage. When freed from prison, he participated in negotiating sessions with British authorities in attempts to find mutually acceptable formulas for advancing India’s quest for independence. Although he condemned the provisions of the India Act of 1935 as totally inadequate, he nevertheless campaigned for the legislative elections that it authorized, winning impressive majorities in all non-Muslim provinces in 1937. Triumphantly Nehru stated that henceforth there were “only two parties” in India, the British-controlled government and the INC. Such statements motivated Mohammed Ali Jinnah, president of the All India Muslim League (which won in the Muslim majority provinces) to rally Indian Muslims to work toward a separate nation, Pakistan. World War II shattered hopes of Hindu-Muslim unity. While the Congress refused to cooperate with the British war effort without first achieving independence
and ordered all its provincial ministries to resign, the League hailed the day that the order was given as a day of deliverance for Muslims. League ministries cooperated with British authorities throughout the war and thereby gained valuable governing experience. Nehru spent the war years in jail for leading campaigns of noncooperation, and out of jail negotiating with British missions on the timetable for the transfer of power to Indians. His longest stint in prison was between August 1942 and March 1945. Elections in Britain in 1945 had brought the Labour Party to power. Prime Minister Clement Attlee appointed Louis, Lord Mountbatten, Allied supreme commander in the Southeast Asia war theater, the last viceroy to India to complete the handover of power, set for August 1947. By that time the Muslim League had become firmly committed to Pakistan, and Gandhi and Nehru were forced to concede to a partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan, which was accompanied by communal rioting and large-scale movement of refugees, with countless killed. Nehru became the first prime minister of independent India. The years between 1947 and 1964, when Nehru was prime minister and the Congress Party held a majority in the Indian parliament, are called the Nehru Era. Economically, Nehru was committed to industrial expansion and adopted many features of the planned economy of communist nations, although he also allowed free enterprise. He abandoned the Gandhian vision of handicraft industries. India’s neutral stance and leadership among the nonaligned nations resulted in both the Communist and the Western blocs giving large amounts of economic aid to India. Farming remained in private hands, and there was no state-sponsored land distribution to the peasants. Economic development was stymied by rapid population growth, spurred by medical advances that increased life expectancy. Nehru conceded that India had to run fast in order to stand still because, despite steady gains in gross national product, per capita income showed little growth, and most of the population remained very poor. Under Nehru (and afterward), India’s main international problem was Pakistan. The two newly independent nations went to war immediately over control of Kashmir, a princely state in the north with a Muslim majority population but ruled by a Hindu prince. Under the terms of the partition all princely states had to choose to join either India or Pakistan, and the ruler of Kashmir opted to join India, which immediately sent in its military. Pakistani forces also crossed into Kashmir, touching off the first Indo-
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Pakistani War. A cease-fire under a United Nations mandate went into effect in 1948, but the dispute remained unsettled, and Kashmir remained partitioned in 2006. A small war in 1961 expelled the Portuguese from their enclave, called Goa, in southwestern coastal India. As a republic, India remained a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. Nehru’s foreign policy was aimed at securing Indian leadership among the nonaligned nations in the cold war; most of them were newly independent countries in Asia and Africa. However, he found his quest for leadership challenged by the People’s Republic of China, which, although communist, also sought to lead the Third World. Nehru’s friendship with China hit a roadblock over Tibet, a Chinese territory that Great Britain had sought to draw into its sphere of influence since the late 19th century. Tibet had enjoyed autonomy under the weak Chinese republican governments after 1912, which ended when the communist government of China militarily took control of Tibet and began consolidating its power there. A disputed boundary between the two nations remained unresolved, China contending that the McMahon Line drawn by the British in 1914 included 52,000 square miles of Chinese territory in India. Relations were exacerbated when a failed Tibetan revolt against China led to the flight of the Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama, to India, which gave him and his followers political asylum. A brief war broke out between India and China (September–November 1962) in which the Indian army was decisively defeated. The victorious Chinese army, however, did not advance beyond the area in dispute. The war was a severe blow to Nehru’s prestige. See also Bandung Conference (Asian-African Conference); Gandhi, Indira. Further reading: Gopal, Sarvepalli. Jawaharlal Nehru, A Biography. Vols. 1 and 2. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979; Nehru, Jawaharlal. The Discovery of India. New York: 1946; Wolpert, Stanley. Nehru, A Tryst with Destiny. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur
Nepal civil war The Nepal Maoist/communist rebellion, more often called the Nepal civil war, started on February 13, 1996, as an armed attempt by communist forces to overthrow the mainstream government and replace it with a targeted “People’s Republic of Nepal.” The rebellion was
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The country of Nepal, nestled in the Himalya Mountains, faces a civil war as communist forces try to overthrow the mainstream government and replace it with the People’s Republic of Nepal.
spurred by growing dissatisfaction and unrest with the monarchy and mainstream political groups. In late 2006, the conflict was ongoing. The war’s origins can be traced back to Nepal’s political past. Nepal started out as a monarchy in the 17th century under the Shah dynasty and came under British rule in 1816 as a result of defeat in the AngloNepalese War. Nepal gained independence from British rule in 1923. During this period, some Nepalese became interested in communism while others favored democracy. In 1959 an experimental democratic government was instituted, but it was overthrown by King Mahendra in 1961. Communists were present in Nepal in the 1960s, but King Mahendra had banned political parties. When King Birendra allowed political parties to exist again
in 1990, with Nepal’s government transforming into a constitutional monarchy, the communists formed the United People’s Front (UPF). In 1994 the antigovernment element of the UPF split, forming the Communist Party of Nepal (CPN), which upheld the communist principles of Mao Zedong. Tensions in the country, because of corruption and controversy in elections, led the CPN to decide that an armed uprising was the only way to achieve their goals. On February 13, 1996, the CPN launched simultaneous attacks on police and government targets. The leader of the communists is a shadowy figure called Prachanda. However, the methods used by the communists within Nepal can be considered something short of terrorism; there have been reports of torture, random killings, bombings, abductions, and intimidation
of civilians and government officials. The Royal Nepal Army fought the communist forces in what they called a police action, and have not declared war. Kilo Sera 2, launched in June–August 1998, was a government operation cracking down on the communist rebels. The government believed that enforcement of law and order was all that was needed to quell the rebellion. The operation is considered to have added fuel to the rebellion instead of discouraging it, since the people were more sympathetic to the rebels. In June 2001 Crown Prince Dipendra went on a shooting rampage and killed most of the royal family—including his father, King Birendra, and his mother, Queen Aishwarya. As a result, Gyanendra, the late king’s brother, took the kingship, although he let the parliamentary government continue operating. Although disagreement on the prince’s choice of wife was considered the reason for the rampage, conspiracy theories circulated that made King Gyanendra the mastermind of the killings for the purpose of seizing power in Nepal. In 2002, under the banner of the War on Terror after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the United States, Europe, and India began supporting the Nepalese government with supplies and financial aid. On February 1, 2005, King Gyanendra dismissed Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, restoring an absolute monarchy in Nepal and further fueling suspicions that he had masterminded the 2001 royal family killings. This action, however, caused further aid from other countries to cease. In April 2006 King Gyanendra agreed to cease his absolute monarchy and return power to his parliament, led by Prime Minister G. P. Koirala. In May 2006 the Nepalese government called a cease-fire and started peace talks with the rebels, though the rebels participated in talks without agreeing to lay down their arms. In July, a United Nations delegation came to mediate peace terms, and both the government and the rebels agreed to let the UN team mediate. As of 2006 more than 12,700 casualties had been reported, and 150,000 people had been displaced as a result of the war. On November 21, 2006, a peace accord was signed between the rebel forces led by the mysterious Prachanda and Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, officially ending hostilities. But it remains to be seen whether this will be the end of long-term tensions in the country. Further reading: Muni, S. D. Maoist Insurgency in Nepal: The Challenge and the Response. New Delhi: Observer Research Foundation, 2004; “Q&A: Nepal War.” BBC News Online, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2707107.stm
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(cited September 2006); Raj, Prakash A. Maoists in the Land of Buddha: An Analytical Study of the Maoist Insurgency in Nepal. Delhi: Nirala, 2004; Thapa, Deepak. Understanding the Maoist Movement of Nepal. Kathmandu: Martin Chautari, Centre for Social Research and Development, 2003; Thapa, Deepak, and Bandira Sijapati. A Kingdom Under Siege: Nepal’s Maoist Insurgency, 1996 to 2003. London: Zed Books, 2005. Chino Fernandez
Ngo Dinh Diem
(1901–1963) South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem was president of South Vietnam from 1955 until his death in 1963. He was born into a privileged family from the Vietnamese elite. Ngo Dinh Diem’s ancestors were among the first to convert Vietnamese to Catholicism in the 17th century. As a Catholic, he was closely aligned with the French colonial rule in Vietnam. In 1933 Ngo Dinh Diem was appointed to the Ministry of the Interior under the emperor Bao Dai, who ruled under French tutelage. However, he was soon forced to resign since the French opposed his proposed reforms. For 12 years he resided in Hue without holding public office. He did not return to power until 1954, when Bao Dai invited him to join his new government. Nevertheless, within a year he had engineered the ousting of the emperor and established himself as president of South Vietnam with dictatorial powers. He had been able to achieve this because of the support of the United States, which believed that his opposition to communism would make him the best candidate to lead a pro-Western united Vietnam. The United States was soon frustrated by Ngo Dinh Diem’s intransigence and refusal to accede to the terms under which the United States had backed him. These included most notably the implementation of the Geneva Accords, which required general elections throughout the country in 1956. Instead he appointed members of his family to senior positions within the administration. When it became clear that he had no intention of following U.S. policies, U.S. authorities withdrew their support and permitted Vietnamese army officers to assassinate him in November 1963. Further reading: Jacobs, Seth. America’s Miracle Man in Vietnam: Ngo Dinh Diem, Religion, Race, and U.S. Intervention in
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Southeast Asia, 1950–57. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005; Ninh, Kim N. B. A World Transformed: The Politics of Culture in Revolutionary Vietnam, 1945–65. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002; Turley, William S. The Second Indochina War: A Short Political and Military History, 1945–75. Denver, CO: Mentor Books, 1987. See also Nguyen Van Thieu; Vietnam War
agreement of 1973. As U.S. forces withdrew from South Vietnam and the North Vietnamese advanced, he ordered all South Vietnamese forces to protect Saigon, but was unsuccessful. As the city fell he resigned as president and fled to exile, first in London and then in the United States.
John Walsh
Further reading: Isaacs, Arnold. Without Honor. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983. Tang, Truong Nhu. A Vietcong Memoir: An Inside Account of the Vietnam War and its Aftermath. New York: Vintage Books, 1986.
Nguyen Van Thieu
See also Vietnam War.
(1923–2001) South Vietnamese leader John Walsh
Nguyen Van Thieu was president of South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) from 1967 until it fell to the Communist North Vietnamese forces in 1975. He played a major part in the U.S. war in Vietnam and lived the remainder of his life in exile. Nguyen Van Thieu was the son of a small landowning family in a Vietnam colonized by the French. He aspired to freedom for his country and joined Ho Chi Minh’s liberation struggle in 1945. However, he subsequently defected to fight on the side of the French against his former allies. His ability as a military leader was soon recognized and, from 1954, he took command of the Vietnamese Military Academy of South Vietnam after it won independence from France. He served under Ngo Dinh Diem but also took part in Ngo’s assassination in 1963, with the tacit support of U.S. authorities. He subsequently took a leading role in Nguyen Cao Ky’s military government, and was elected president of the Republic of Vietnam in 1967 and then reelected unopposed in 1971. Nguyen Van Theiu’s administration tended toward authoritarianism, with U.S. support possibly because the United States had no alternatives. Nguyen Van Thieu was nevertheless critical of U.S. policies and politicians. He resented their lack of interest in Vietnamese culture and history, refusal to learn the Vietnamese language, and demands for democracy. Even as he was airlifted out of Saigon in 1975 just before it fell to communism, he accused the United States of running away and abandoning his country. He was as an ally of U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson and then Richard Nixon, as he led the South Vietnamese state against the Communist forces. He worked with U.S. military advisers and then with the large-scale deployment of U.S. and allied forces. As the Communists gained ground, he agreed to participate in negotiations that resulted in the peace
Nicaraguan revolution (1979–1990) On July 19, 1979, a multiclass coalition led by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, [FSLN], or Sandinistas) overthrew the 43-year Somoza dictatorship, inaugurating the period of the Nicaraguan (or Sandinista) revolution. Nicaragua, under the FSLN, is considered the last major battleground of the cold war in the Western Hemisphere. In the early 1980s the revolutionary regime embarked on a series of successful programs in health care, literacy, and related arenas and enjoyed wide spread support. By the mid1980s the regime and revolutionary process began to weaken, largely the result of a crippling U.S. trade embargo and the U.S.-supported contra war under U.S. President Ronald Reagan. On February 25, 1990, a coalition of anti-Sandinista political parties defeated the ruling regime at the polls, effectively ending the 11-year revolutionary experiment. The origins of the revolution lie in decades of politically exclusionary dictatorship under the three Somozas; the long history of U.S. military, economic, and political intervention in Nicaraguan affairs; the crushing poverty suffered by the majority of the country’s citizens; and the political and military organizing efforts of the FSLN. Named after Augusto C. Sandino, the nationalist rebel who fought the U.S. Marines to a stalemate from 1927 to 1932, the FSLN was founded in 1961 by Carlos Fonseca Amador, Tomás Borge, and other Nicaraguans inspired by the example of Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolution. After nearly two decades of organizing and struggle, and the death of Fonseca in 1976, by the late 1970s the Sandinistas had garnered the support of the majority of western Nicaragua’s
urban poor and a substantial segment of its business and landowning class. Their political program emphasized opposition to the Somoza dictatorship (Somocismo) and U.S. imperialism; nationalism, democracy, and social justice at home; and political nonalignment abroad. In 1979 a divided elite, the intransigence and corruption of the regime of Anastasio Somoza Debayle, and a relatively benign U.S. administration under President Jimmy Carter combined to create a strategic political opening, which the FSLN exploited to defeat Somoza’s National Guard (Guardia Nacional) and seize state power. An estimated 50,000 Nicaraguans died in the uprisings and insurrections against the Somoza regime, around 1.7 percent of the country’s population of 3 million. The economy was devastated, with GDP declining 7.2 percent in 1978 and 25.9 percent in 1979, and the country saddled with $1.6 billion in foreign debt and severe shortages of food, medicine, and other basic commodities. revolutionary state After ousting Somoza, the Sandinistas embarked on a far-reaching program of social and economic reform. The preexisting national government was abolished, replaced by the Governing Junta of National Reconstruction (JGRN, or Junta), established in Costa Rica in early 1979 and the country’s supreme political authority. From 1979 to 1984 de facto political power was wielded by the FSLN’s nine-member Joint National Directorate (DN), whose policy prescriptions guided the JGRN. The Fundamental Statute of the Republic of Nicaragua, decreed by the JGRN in August 1979, abolished the previous constitution and established three branches of government: executive (the JGRN, comprised of five members); legislative (the Council of State, inaugurated in May 1980 and composed at that time of 47 members); and judicial (the Courts of Justice). After national elections in November 1984, the National Assembly replaced the Council of State, and the JGRN was dissolved, replaced by elected president Daniel Ortega. In January 1987 a new constitution was promulgated codifying these and other changes. Promoting democracy from below, the revolutionary regime found much of its legitimacy in the many popular organizations (organizaciones populares) that helped bring the Sandinistas to power, and which continued to play a key role in the revolution after 1979. Chief among these were the Sandinista Defense Committees (CDSs, or neighborhood committees); the Sandinista Workers Federation (CST), the Rural Workers
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Association (ATC), the National Union of Farmers and Ranchers (UNAG), and the Luisa Amada Espinosa Nicaraguan Women’s Association (AMNLAE). Incorporating gender equality into its platform, the FSLN focused considerable attention on women’s issues, including maternal health, child care, political equality, and others, though critics later charged that the party largely reproduced the patriarchal norms of the larger society. The new government also abolished the National Guard and police forces, and in their stead created the Popular Sandinista Army (Ejército Popular Sandinista, or EPS), under the direction of the Ministry of Defense; and the Sandinista Police and State Security Forces, under the Ministry of Interior. One of the major tasks of the new regime was to launch extensive land reforms through its Ministry of Agricultural Development and Agrarian Reform (MIDINRA), headed by DN member Jaime Wheelock. Sandinista agrarian reform efforts in the 1980s, like those of Cuba in the 1960s, have been the topic of enormous controversy. On seizing power, the government expropriated all land owned by Somoza and his allies, a total of some 800,000 hectares, or 20 percent of the country’s arable land. Most was given over to various types of state-run cooperatives. Criticized for favoring these state-run farms over privately owned peasant farms through differential loan and credit policies, MIDINRA’s post-expropriation policies were among the chief reasons cited by opponents of the regime for the growth of counter revolutionary (contra) forces within the country beginning in the early 1980s. social and cultural policies In the realm of popular welfare, the revolutionary government embarked on a wide range of reforms. These included a more extensive social security system; large state subsidies for housing and staple foods; the creation of a national health care system; a major expansion of public schooling; and a Literacy Crusade that earned the UNESCO Literacy Prize in 1980. In the cultural arena, the Ministry of Culture promoted a host of revolutionary cultural products and forms including music, theater, dance, and visual arts, in part through the Sandinista Association of Cultural Workers (ASTC). A major issue through the 1980s was the relationship between the Sandinista regime and the ethnic minorities of the Atlantic coast region, which had a very different history and culture from mestizo-dominated, Spanish-speaking western Nicaragua. Despite the FSLN’s efforts to grant the Atlantic coast population substantial
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political and cultural autonomy, from the early 1980s opposition to the regime mounted among the region’s indigenous (Miskitu, Sumu, and Rama Amerindians), Garifuna (Afro-Amerindian), and English-speaking Afro-Caribbean (or Creole) population—minorities that together comprised around 35 percent of the coastal (costeño) population of some 270,000. Another major issue concerned the revolution’s relationship to the Roman Catholic Church. Critics of the regime emphasized the disrespect shown to Pope John Paul II in his visit to Managua in March 1983, which they argued was emblematic of the FSLN’s antiCatholicism, while the regime’s supporters stressed the influence of liberation theology on Sandinista efforts to promote equal rights and social justice. On November 4, 1984, the Sandinistas held national elections—to be held every six years—in which they garnered 67 percent of the vote and won 61 of 96 seats in the newly created National Assembly. The elections were denounced as fraudulent by the United States but judged as fair by international observers from Europe and the Americas, including the Latin American Studies Association. international relations Internationally, the Sandinista government pursued a policy of nonalignment, garnering the support of the Nonaligned Movement, and forging alliances with and receiving foreign assistance from western Europe (including France, West Germany, Spain, Italy, The Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark), as well as Cuba, the East bloc, and the Soviet Union. The United States, under President Reagan, interpreted the regime as a Cuban and Soviet beachhead and bulwark of communism. On April 1, 1981, the Reagan administration announced a cutoff of aid, thereafter successfully depriving the regime of credits and loans from the InterAmerican Development Bank and other U.S.-dominated transnational financial institutions. On December 1, 1981, Reagan issued a Presidential Finding authorizing the Central Intelligence Agency to “support and conduct paramilitary operations against . . . Nicaragua,” which included support for contra forces, composed principally of several thousand former members of Somoza’s National Guard exiled in Honduras. In February and March 1984 the United States mined the harbor at Puerto Corinto, western Nicaragua’s largest port, and in May 1985 Reagan announced a U.S. trade embargo against Nicaragua. These and related hostile acts galvanized a growing peace and justice movement,
in solidarity with the revolution, in the United States, Europe, and Latin America. end of the revolutionary experiment By the late 1980s the regime was beleaguered by the combined effects of the trade embargo, the contra war, hyperinflation, and growing popular discontent in consequence of the devastation of the contra war, severe economic dislocations, and the policy of universal military conscription. Losing the February 1990 elections to Violeta Chamorro and the National Opposition Union (UNO), the regime peacefully ceded power, leaving the country with some $12 billion in debt. After 1990 the legacy of the revolution continued to exercise a major influence on the country’s social, political, and cultural life, while a retooled FSLN wielded considerable political power in a series of coalition governments. A substantially reconfigured Sandinista Party regained the presidency in 2006 with the election of Daniel Ortega. Further reading: Walker, Thomas W., ed. Nicaragua: The First Five Years. New York: Praeger, 1985; Walker, Thomas W., ed. Nicaragua Without Illusions: Regime Transition and Structural Adjustment in the 1990s. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1997. Michael J. Schroeder
Nigeria Nigeria is located in western Africa on the Gulf of Guinea between Benin and Cameroon. It occupies 923,768 square kilometers (356,667 square miles), making it one-third larger than the U.S. state of Texas. Nigeria stretches 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) from north to south, and is 1,100 kilometers (700 miles) wide from the Atlantic coast to its eastern border. Nigeria’s population has grown extremely rapidly from 35 million to over 137 million in 2004. It is home to one out of every six Africans. The population is extremely diverse and contains as many as 250 separate ethnic groups and a reported 500 languages. The major population divisions include the Hausa (29 percent), who live in the north; the Yoruba (21 percent), who occupy the southwest; the Igbo or Ibo (18 percent), who are in the southeast; and the Ijaw (10 percent), who reside in the east. The Fulani (9 percent), found primarily in the north, along with a large number of smaller groups, complete the essential Nigerian
ethnic matrix. This societal complexity makes for enormous governing difficulties. There is also the divide of religion, with the north heavily Muslim and the south largely Christian. One attempt to foster better unity was the adoption of English as the nation’s official language. Fifty percent of the population now has a basic command, although there are many more who speak a smattering of broken or “pidgin” English. Administratively the nation is currently divided into 36 states and one capital territory. Abuja, located in the center of the country, became the nation’s capital in 1991, replacing in this capacity the large port city of Lagos with its over 13 million people. Modern Nigeria is a product of the late 19th-century British Empire builders. Before this time it was part of a wide-ranging section of West Africa made up of many peoples and territories, all occupying much smaller tribal areas. Lagos became a full British colony in 1861. The country’s name is taken from the river Niger. The actual official designation of Nigeria is often attributed to the wife of a colonial official who in 1898 merged Niger with “ia” to create today’s identity, which means literally “black area.” All of West Africa, including Nigeria, was the subject of even earlier European interest. The Portuguese came to the area in the late 15th century, attracted by the lucrative slave trade with local tribes. The profits were such that the Portuguese slave trading monopoly was broken in the 16th century as other Europeans, including the British, wanted a share of the riches. Lagos and Badagry became important markets for the exchange of a variety of products, particularly gin and firearms. Although the slave trade was abolished in the British Empire and in the United States after 1807, British commercial interest in the area didn’t decline, and the penetration of the interior rivers by steamships began in earnest after the 1840s. Lagos became a key base and, in 1886, the National African Company, later the Royal Niger Company, received a royal charter to oversee trade in the Niger Delta, which included governing rights. The company’s interests also expanded northward. These operations became too expensive and, in 1897, the company’s governing provisions were removed, and the British government asserted its authority, creating in 1900 a North Nigeria Protectorate. By 1902 after a time of armed resistance, the Sokoto Caliphate and Kano submitted to British authority. Lugard, who had become governor-general, now combined all the protectorates with Lagos to form, in January 1914, the Federation of Nigeria. A policy of
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indirect rule followed during which local tribal leaders, emirs, and sultans administered their areas in conjunction with the colonial civil service. As late as the 1930s only a few hundred British officers were in country. Infrastructure was improved, including railroad construction to the north, but education in the Muslim areas lagged behind Christian-led efforts in the south. The north remained essentially a distinct enclave. Nationalism became an increasing factor during the 1930s and was essentially motivated by the notion of Pan-Africanism. Yet a Nigerian sense of nationalism was made more difficult by the area’s many regional and tribal divides. The end of World War II left Britain weary of the demands and costs of empire, and moves toward change occurred as early as 1946. At this time a constitutional reform was introduced that created in the first instance three regional legislatures. A fourth midwest regional legislature was added in 1963. Full self-government came to these regions in the 1950s. The desired goal was the formation of a federal legislative structure for all of Nigeria, a system that the north finally agreed to join in 1959. Direct elections occurred in 1959, and a federal government was founded. This new government, meeting for the first time in 1960, declared Nigeria’s independence on October 1. This sense of national hope proved short-lived. Old antagonisms emerged and threatened any idea of lasting unity. The conflicts came quickly with the Yoruba opposing western regional reorganizations. This lack of stability undermined the national government, creating a pattern for the future that would include ethnic fighting and massive corruption. In 1963 Nigeria became a federal republic with an elected president in an effort to strengthen central authority. The elections in 1964 produced more arguments and rioting over suspected electoral fraud. The Nigerian National Alliance took control of parliament, and the United Progressive Grand Alliance of eastern and western groups became their main opposition. This unsettled situation led eastern Igbo-dominated army officers to stage a coup in January 1966. Major General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi took command and instituted bloody purges of the political establishment. Fighting broke out within the army itself. After only four months in charge General Ironsi was dead, and Yakubu Gowon, a lieutenant colonel soon to be general, had taken over as leader of the military government. The situation failed to settle, particularly after the Hausa murdered approximately 20,000 Igbo who lived in the north. Retaliations led to more discord, motivating the eastern region’s military governor, Lieutenant
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Colonel Odemugwu Ojukwu, to declare on May 30, 1967, the eastern region an independent entity called the Republic of Biafra. This situation led to a bloody civil war, perhaps the worst in modern African history. The war lasted three years and cost numerous lives. At war’s end the victorious Federal side declared a period of reconciliation and launched a campaign to reconstruct the devastated area. Nigeria was now firmly in the hands of Gowon’s Supreme Military Council, which did promise a return to civilian rule in 1976. Efforts were made to transform the economy from its agricultural base to a more modern mixed economy. There were serious attacks on corruption and moves to control the government’s role in the expanding oil industry, which from the late 1960s saw Nigeria become one of the world’s largest exporters. Criticism of Gowon’s rule was steadily mounting. While attending a 1975 Organization of African Unity conference, Gowan found himself the victim of another coup led by the Sandhurst-trained brigadier general Murtala Mohammed. General Mohammed consolidated his authority, purged government offices, created more administrative states, and put military governors in control of the media. He also imported new Soviet aircraft for the military. His time in office, though, proved short-lived. He was assassinated by fellow officers in 1976. His replacement was General Olusegun Obasanjo, a Yoruba, who would years later become Nigeria’s president. In 1979 Obasanjo produced a new constitution based on the U.S. model and prepared for elections to return the country to civilian rule. The fall in oil prices in 1981 brought problems for the new government as debts mounted. The result was a poor business climate. Blame was projected onto many quarters, violence was frequent, and foreign workers were expelled. The unrest also brought an end to the Shehu Shagari presidency, which again saw a disgruntled military react, cancelling Shagari’s 1983 election. Mohammed Buhari, the chief of the army, took over the government with the standard promises to end corruption and reverse the fortunes of the state. However, Buhari didn’t last long, and in August 1985 he was overthrown by General Ibrahim Babangida. General Sani Abacha gave his support to this coup, and in 1990 he positioned himself for later rule when he became minister of defense. Army control did not reverse the economic crisis, which was now dire. Currency devaluation was demanded as a term for continued International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank financial support in the form of loans. Again a return to civilian rule was planned,
and state elections were scheduled for 1991, with a presidential election to follow in 1993. To the military’s surprise, Moshood Abiola won. The military, however, rejected the result, Babangida imprisoned Abiola, and in the midst of continuing confusion General Sani Abacha took over as military president. Nigeria’s perennial problems did not disappear under Abacha. Corruption, mismanagement, inefficiency, and waste were continuing factors in government and civilian life. Opponents were persecuted, foreign debt increased enormously, and all reforms failed as poverty increased so rapidly that Nigeria became by the late 1990s one of the world’s poorest countries. The government particularly punished the Ogoni people who occupied the southeastern oil areas, suppressing their politicians and executing many of them. Although international condemnation of these many rights abuses was considerable, the political situation did not loosen until Abacha’s death in 1998 of a suspected heart attack. His successor, General Abdulsalam Abubakar, once again said that civilian rule would return. Another new constitution came in 1998 and elections followed in 1999. Olusegun Obasanjo, who had been freed from prison only months before, led the People’s Democratic Party to election victory and thus ended nearly 16 years of military rule. The new government attempted to reverse Nigeria’s deep-seated economic and social problems and gave particular attention to reclaiming the billions that were stolen during the rule of General Abacha. However, reform proved illusory, and corruption and waste remained major factors in Nigeria’s continued poor economic and social performance. Violence also mounted between the Muslim and Christian sections of society. This situation became worse after 2000 following the institution of sharia law in the Muslim-dominated north. The 2003 elections represented the first time in Nigeria’s history that one civilian government gave way to another without military intervention. The elections even included the former Biafran leader, Colonel Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu. Voting irregularities were also considerable, and violence and ethnic fighting were frequent. There were attempts to make the presidential election more national in focus to reflect more broadly based issues. The ultimate hope was that more unity might result. Obasanjo’s party won a majority in both houses, and with 60 percent of the vote he secured a second fouryear term as president. It remained to be seen whether a more democratic government could cope with Nigeria’s significant number of problems. The average Nigerian became poorer in the
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civilian transition, and disputes loomed among many of its peoples over ethnic and religious differences. In the Niger Delta, the Ijaw people campaigned for a bigger share from the oil industry, which led to serious disruptions, kidnappings, and strikes. These violent outbursts hurt oil production. The vast wealth that oil was supposed to bring has not filtered through Nigerian society. The question remains: Can the instability, political and economic corruption, and grinding poverty be reversed? Further reading: Baker, Geoffrey L. Tradewinds on the Niger: Saga of the Royal Niger Company, 1830–1971. New York: Radcliffe Press, 1996; Falola, Toyin. The History of Nigeria. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999; Maier, Karl. The House Has Fallen: Nigeria in Crisis. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2002. Theodore W. Eversole
Nixon, Richard
(1913–1994) U.S. president Richard M. Nixon was the 36th vice president of the United States from January 20, 1953, until January 20, 1961, and was the 37th president of the United States, serving from January 20, 1969 until August 9, 1974. He was the only person ever elected twice as vice president and twice as president, and was the only president to have resigned the presidency. Richard Milhous Nixon was born on January 9, 1913, at Yorba Linda, California, the son of Frank Nixon, an owner of a service station, and Hannah (née Milhous), a strong Quaker. Richard, the second of five children, attended Whittier College, then Duke University Law School, graduating in 1937. He then returned to Whittier where he practiced law, and also met Thelma Catherine (“Pat”) Ryan when the two were cast in the same play at a local community theater. They married in 1940. Moving to Washington, D.C., Nixon worked in the Office of Price Administration and in August 1942 joined the U.S. Navy, becoming an aviation ground officer in the Pacific and ending up as a lieutenant commander at the end of the war. He then entered politics and in 1946 was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for the 12th district of California, defeating the incumbent, Democratic Congressman Jerry Voorhis. Voorhis had been elected for five consecutive terms, and Nixon was critical of him for his liberal views. In 1948
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Nixon was able to win both the Democratic and the Republican primaries, and on his return to Washington, became a leading member of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAAC) until 1950. He rose to national, if not international, attention in his investigation of Alger Hiss. Nixon’s cross-examination of Hiss before the HUAC established his anticommunist credentials, and in 1950, Nixon ran for the Senate against the Democrat Helen Gahagan Douglas. This campaign also included innuendoes, with “pink sheets” being distributed comparing how Douglas voted in the Senate with the voting record of Vito Marcantonio, a left-wing senator from New York. This led to Nixon earning his nickname “Tricky Dick,” coined by a small Californian newspaper, the Independent Review, and taken up by Douglas. In 1952 Nixon managed to win the vice presidential nomination on a ticket with Dwight D. Eisenhower. Nixon was seen as an uncompromising anticommunist, but was tainted with allegations of corruption. Journalists discovered that Nixon had operated a slush fund with money from Southern Californian businessmen, and Nixon went on the attack. He listed his family’s assets, admitting that his six-year-old daughter Tricia had received, as a gift, a cocker spaniel called Checkers, and he announced that the family would be keeping it. The public responded favorably to Nixon’s frankness, and the Eisenhower-Nixon ticket won 442 electoral college votes. Nixon had two terms as vice president and during that time is said to have redefined the role of the office. He became a prominent spokesman for the Eisenhower administration, particularly on aspects of foreign policy. Nixon chaired a number of cabinet sessions when Eisenhower was incapacitated owing to illness, but Eisenhower left most power with some advisers, with Nixon always excluded from the inner circle. He also went on a tour of Latin America in 1958, his progress being followed by anti-American demonstrators, and to the Soviet Union in 1959 where he met with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev. Nominated as the Republican Party’s presidential candidate in 1960, Nixon used his experience as vice president to try to upstage the Democrat Party’s choice of John F. Kennedy. The campaign has become bestknown for the first television debates between the two candidates. Kennedy was able to portray himself as representing a generational change in leadership, looking younger and “fresher” than Nixon. He was certainly able to respond to Nixon’s attacks, but although Nixon
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President Richard Nixon speaks with guests during his daughter Tricia’s wedding at the White House.
looked terrible in some of his television appearances, many people who listened to the debates on the radio felt that he did better than Kennedy. The election was close, with Nixon losing by fewer than 120,000 votes, with queries about the voting in Illinois and Texas. Nixon chose not to challenge the results too much, and his dignity won him the support of many. Retiring to private life in California, Nixon then wrote a book, Six Crises, in which he described his role facing six crises in his career as a congressman, senator, and then vice president. It was influential, and Mao Zedong was to read it in preparation for Nixon’s 1972 visit to China. Nixon contested the governorship of California in 1962, losing to the incumbent, Democrat Edmund G. (“Pat”) Brown. He then again retired from politics and went to New York, where he practiced law as the senior partner in Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie and Alexander. He was disappointed when Barry Goldwater was chosen as the Republican Party choice in the 1964 elections, writing that Goldwater lost the entire campaign
when he (Goldwater) declared that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” By contrast, Nixon built up a reputation as a moderate and an expert in foreign policy, which contributed to the Republican Party choosing him as their candidate in 1968. By 1968 Nixon had put together a coalition of supporters that managed to ally itself with Southern conservatives led by Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. Nixon promised to name a Southerner to the Supreme Court, oppose court-ordered “busing” urged by the civil rights movement, and chose a hard-line vice-presidential candidate who would have Southern support. His choice was Maryland governor Spiro Agnew. Nixon stood against a disunited Democratic Party, which was split between supporters of Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy who opposed the Vietnam War, and Hubert Humphrey, choice of the mainstream Democratic Party. Robert Kennedy’s assassination had resulted in Humphrey being chosen as the candidate after a torrid party gathering at Chicago which led to fighting in the streets. Nixon promised that he would get “peace with honor” in Vietnam but was not specific about how he was going to achieve this. It did not stop him criticizing Vice President Humphrey, who, as part of the Lyndon B. Johnson administration, was blamed for the increasing casualties there, especially with the Tet Offensive at the start of the election campaign. Nixon, however, was more worried that the candidacy of George Wallace, as a pro-segregationist party, might split his vote in the South. Nixon won comfortably with 301 electoral college seats to Humphrey’s 191 and Wallace’s 46. However, the popular vote was far closer: Nixon, 31.7 million, and Humphrey, 30.9 million. After the election, Nixon was determined to introduce a number of reforms. As soon as he became president, he changed the civil rights and law enforcement legislation. He established the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Office of Minority Business Enterprise. Nixon pushed through the space project, with Neil Armstrong landing on the Moon on July 20, 1969, and speaking to Nixon from the Moon. In January 1972 Nixon also approved the Space Shuttle Program. He also launched, in his State of the Union speech in January 1971, an additional $100 million to be added to the National Cancer Institute budget for cancer research, inaugurating his “War on Cancer.” He had also proposed the Family Assistance Program (FAP) to replace the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), which
would have provided poor families with a guaranteed annual income. The move was defeated in the Senate, but it did lead to the Supplemental Security Income program and many other related programs. Overall, Nixon’s aim was to reduce inflation by limiting government spending, but from 1971 the government ran up what was then the biggest deficit in U.S. history. Nixon’s main aim was to achieve an “honorable” settlement to the conflict in Vietnam. To achieve this, his first major task was to increase “Vietnamization,” by which the United States reduced the number of its soldiers while increasing the number of South Vietnamese soldiers. This became known as the Guam Doctrine, or the Nixon Doctrine. With the U.S. command worried about the state of readiness of the South Vietnamese troops, Nixon resumed the bombing of North Vietnam, which had been suspended by Lyndon Johnson just before the 1968 elections. In fact, Nixon expanded the war by organizing the secret bombing of Cambodia in March 1969, and supporting the overthrow of Cambodia’s ruler, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, in March 1970. Straight after this, the Vietnamese Communists tried to gain control of Cambodia, and soon afterwards Nixon ordered U.S. soldiers and South Vietnamese forces to attack Viet Cong sanctuaries in Cambodia. nixon and china Nixon also started a series of initially secret negotiations with the North Vietnamese through his National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, who met with the North Vietnamese foreign minister, Le Duc Tho. As these progressed, Nixon began establishing links with the People’s Republic of China. The United States lifted its trade and travel restrictions in 1971. When the Chinese indicated that they would favor high-level contacts, the U.S. and Chinese table-tennis teams took part in reciprocal visits, with Kissinger visiting China, and then Nixon making his own visit to China in February–March 1972—the first by a U.S. president while in office. Nixon felt that better relations with China would put pressure on the Soviet Union. Before Nixon left China, the Shanghai Communiqué recorded that Nixon acknowledged the “one China” policy by which the United States accepted that Taiwan is a part of one China. In May 1972 Nixon visited the Soviet Union and began détente, with several talks on limiting nuclear weapons such as the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). By October 1972 Nixon was close to reaching an agreement with the North Vietnamese, having achieved most of his objectives just before the U.S. presidential elections. The South Vietnamese raised objections, while
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the North Vietnamese refused to compromise, knowing how much Nixon wanted the agreement. No agreement was reached by the elections, with the Christmas bombings of North Vietnam forcing the North Vietnamese back to the negotiation tables, and the final agreement being signed in January 1973 in Paris. All U.S. military personnel were to be withdrawn, all prisoners of war were to be released, and there would be a ceasefire, along with a heavy rearming of the South Vietnamese. Kissinger and Le Duc Tho were awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize, but Tho declined to receive it. Nixon also was involved in controversial actions around the world. He oversaw the channeling of millions of dollars to the Chilean opposition, and supported the military overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973, allying itself to the subsequent government of General Augusto Pinochet. In the Middle East, Nixon supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War, an action that led to the 1973 oil crisis. The administration also supported General Yahya Khan in the Indo-Pakistan War of 1971, seriously affecting relations between India and the United States for many years. In 1972 Nixon was renominated for the presidential election along with Spiro Agnew. This led to the formation of the Campaign for the Reelection of the President (CRP), which was nicknamed by his opponents CREEP. On June 17, 1972, five men were arrested for being involved in a burglary at the Democratic Party national headquarters in the Watergate Hotel complex in Washington, D.C. It soon emerged that these men had been hired by the CRP and were charged. With no evidence available at the time linking Watergate to Nixon, Nixon easily won the November 1972 elections with 520 electoral college votes. the cover-up The Watergate scandal became a major issue in 1973, with Nixon having White House counsel John Dean organize a “cover-up.” Two journalists from the Washington Post, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, felt there was more in the Watergate story than was made out, and started receiving information from a source who went by the code name “Deep Throat,” who later turned out to be Mark Felt, deputy director of the FBI. In February 1973 the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, chaired by Senator Sam Ervin, was established to investigate the Watergate affair, and John Dean was interviewed in televised hearings. He started accusing Nixon of involvement in the cover-up of Watergate, with other witnesses testifying
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about illegal activities by Nixon and his administration, which initiated an organized program of harassment of other politicians, journalists, and others. It became evident that Nixon had installed a recording system in the Oval Office soon after he became president, but Nixon refused to comply with a subpoena. Nixon then ordered his attorney general to fire Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor who was investigating Watergate. When the attorney general, Elliot Richardson, resigned, Nixon fired Richardson’s assistant when he also refused to fire Cox. He then managed to get solicitor-general Robert Bork to fire Cox. Finally in July 1974 the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Nixon’s claim of “executive privilege” was no excuse. A transcript of one of Nixon’s conversations, made available on August 5, 1974, showed that the president had discussed the use of the Central Intelligence Agency to block the FBI investigation of the Watergate breakin. Three days later Nixon, faced with the prospect of impeachment by the House of Representatives and conviction in the Senate, announced his resignation effective at noon the following day. Nixon’s vice president, Spiro Agnew, had resigned his office in 1973 after facing charges of bribery, extortion, and tax evasion. He had been replaced by Gerald Ford, who followed Nixon as president. On September 8, 1974, President Ford gave Nixon a presidential pardon. In retirement, Nixon and his wife settled at San Clemente, California, and he wrote his memoirs. He then spent most of the rest of his life writing about foreign policy. He was partly able to restore some of his reputation as an elder statesman. In 1980 he flew to Egypt, where he was present at the funeral of the former shah of Iran, being highly critical of the Jimmy Carter administration’s handling of Iran. Pat Nixon died on June 22, 1993, and Richard Nixon died from a massive stroke on April 22, 1994, in New York City. Further Reading: Greene, John Robert. The Limits of Power: The Nixon and Ford Administrations. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992; Hoff, Joan. Nixon Reconsidered. New York: Basic Books, 1994; Morris, Roger. Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician. New York: Holt, 1990; Nixon, Richard. RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1978; White, Theodore H. Breach of Faith. New York: Atheneum Publishers, 1975. Justin Corfield
Nkrumah, Kwame
(1909–1972) Ghanaian prime minister Kwame Nkrumah was born in the British-controlled Gold Coast (present-day Ghana) in West Africa. He trained as a teacher and studied in both the United States and England. Nkrumah helped to organize the 1945 Pan Africa Congress and remained a staunch supporter of African union and cooperation. An ardent nationalist, Nkrumah served as general secretary of the United Gold Coast Convention but split from the party to establish the Convention People’s Party (CPP) in 1949. His book, I Speak for Freedom, was an impassioned defense of African independence. Nkrumah was jailed by the British for his activist campaigns but was freed in 1951. He led the Gold Coast to complete independence in 1957. The newly independent nation of Ghana had a sound economy and under Nkrumah’s leadership was looked to for direction by other African states. Nkrumah championed the Organization of African Unity (OAU), formed in 1963. He also was an outspoken opponent of the apartheid white-dominated regime in South Africa. However, Nkrumah became increasingly dictatorial and established Ghana as a one-party state in 1964 when he took the title of president for life. A cult of personality arose around Nkrumah, and a trend of one-party states under dictatorial “rulers for life” emerged in many African states during the 1970s. Nkrumah was overthrown in a military coup d’état in 1966; in subsequent years he lived in exile and died in Romania in 1972. See also Ghana. Further reading: Birmingham, David. Kwame Nkrumah: The Father of African Nationalism. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1998; Nkrumah, Kwame. I Speak of Freedom. London: William Heinemann, 1961; Rathbone, Richard. Nkrumah and the Chief: The Politics of Chieftaincy in Ghana, 1951–1960. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000. Janice J. Terry
Noriega, Manuel
(1938– ) general and dictator of Panama A close ally of the U.S. military and intelligence establishment from the late 1950s to the late 1980s, General Manuel Noriega was the dictator of Panama from 1983 to 1989. Intimately involved with U.S. covert efforts
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General Manuel Noriega walks to his seat aboard a U.S. Air Force aircraft, escorted by agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). The former Panamanian leader was flown to the United States, where he was held for trial on drug charges.
to overthrow the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua and to combat leftist revolutionary movements elsewhere in Central America, Noriega ran afoul of U.S. policymakers in the aftermath of the Iran-contra affair; was indicted on federal drug charges in February 1988; and was overthrown in late December 1989 in the U.S. invasion of Panama. He surrendered to U.S. officials in early January 1990; was transported to the United States; tried for drug trafficking in April 1992; found guilty in September; and sentenced to 40 years in prison, where he has remained. Convicted in France for money laundering, and in Panama in absentia for murder, it is unlikely that he will ever be freed. Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno was born on February 11, 1938, in Panama City, the illegitimate child of a poor single woman who died when he was a small boy. Raised by his godmother in Panama City, he entered the military and was trained at the Military School of Chor-
rillos in Peru, where in the late 1950s he was recruited by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. His relationship with U.S. intelligence agencies deepened during his training at the School of the Americas in Fort Gulick, Panama, where he completed his coursework in 1967. Commissioned as an intelligence officer in the Panama National Guard the same year, he rose rapidly in rank. In 1969 he helped dictator General Omar Torrijos fend off a coup attempt, and soon after was appointed the country’s Chief of Military Intelligence. A shrewd political operator who deftly played both sides of the fence, through the 1970s he received hundreds of thousands of dollars as a CIA informant, and passed U.S. secrets to Fidel Castro and other U.S. adversaries. Allegedly complicit in the July 1981 plane crash that resulted in Torrijos’s death, with U.S. backing he became the country’s de facto head of state in August 1983.
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By this time he was working closely with the administration of U.S. president Ronald Reagan in its efforts to overthrow the Sandinistas. He also used Panama’s strict secrecy laws to launch drug money-laundering operations, actively collaborating with the drug cartels of Medellín, Colombia. Washington turned a blind eye to his role in the drug trade, emphasizing instead his collaboration with U.S. hemispheric “war on drugs.” Despite mounting evidence of Noriega’s involvement in the drug trade, in 1987 Attorney General Edwin Meese issued Panama the Drug Enforcement Agency’s “highest commendation” for the country’s anti-narcotics efforts. Meanwhile Noriega’s base of support, in Washington and at home, had eroded. The Iran-contra scandal purged Washington of many of his top supporters, while opposition in Panama mounted, mainly in consequence of his brutality in dealing with his opponents. The ax fell in February 1988 with a 12count indictment on racketeering and narcotics charges issued by U.S. federal prosecutors. After nearly two years of escalating tensions, on December 20, 1989, U.S. forces launched “Operation Just Cause,” invading Panama, killing an estimated 300 civilians, wounding 3,000, and seizing Noriega. Launched in the name of the “war on drugs,” the invasion had a negligible impact on the hemispheric drug trade, which has grown rapidly since. Further reading: Dinges, John. Our Man in Panama: The Shrewd Rise and Brutal Fall of Manuel Noriega. New York: Random House, 1991; Kempe, Frederick. Divorcing the Dictator: America’s Bungled Affair with Noriega. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1990; Koster, R. M., and Guillermo Sánchez Borbón. In the Time of Tyrants: Panama, 1968–1990. New York: Norton, 1990. Michael J. Schroeder
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is a trilateral trade pact among the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Implemented on January 1, 1994, the agreement is intended to foster open and unrestricted commercial relations among its three signatories. Supplemental agreements, also part of NAFTA, are the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC), the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC), and the Understanding
on Emergency Action (Safeguards). Administered in the United States by the International Trade Administration of the Department of Commerce, NAFTA is one of several regional trading blocs in the Western Hemisphere. These include the Andean Community of Nations (CAN, among Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Peru, f. 1969); the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM, f. 1973), the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR, among Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Paraguay, f. 1991), and the Central America–Dominican Republic–United States Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR, f. 2004). NAFTA’s supporters conceive of the agreement as an important stepping stone in the creation of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), which would include the 34 nation-states and territories of the Western Hemisphere. In its goal of fostering unrestricted commercial relations, NAFTA follows the principles of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and its successor, the World Trade Organization (WTO). NAFTA has sparked a huge debate between its supporters and opponents. Its principal supporters in the private sector consist of the hemisphere’s largest corporations, most of which are based in the United States. They argue that in all three countries NAFTA will increase living standards, create new jobs, protect the environment; and ensure compliance with labor laws. Its principal opponents include labor, environmental, faithbased, indigenous rights, and consumer rights groups. They maintain that NAFTA, like the WTO, promotes a “race to the bottom” by favoring large corporations over smaller enterprises, benefiting the rich more than the poor; increasing inequality, causing a net loss of jobs, fostering environmental degradation, and failing to adequately protect the rights of workers. The communiqués of sub-commander Marcos, spokesperson of the Zapatistas of Chiapas, Mexico—a group whose rebellion against the Mexican government was timed to coincide with NAFTA’s implementation—convey many of the principal arguments of NAFTA’s opponents. A large scholarly literature mirrors this debate. On the whole, the evidence demonstrates that NAFTA has increased trade dramatically while failing to meet its supporters’ expectations with regard to employment, poverty, inequality, the environment, and labor rights. In Mexico, poverty, inequality, and unemployment have all increased substantially since NAFTA’s implementation. In the United States and Canada, the creation of new jobs has not kept pace with the outflows of capital and jobs traceable to NAFTA. The leftward tilt in Latin American politics since the 1990s has buttressed that
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continent’s opposition to multilateral trade agreements like NAFTA, the WTO, and the proposed FTAA. Further reading: Duina, Francesco. The Social Construction of Free Trade: The European Union, NAFTA, and MERCOSUR. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006; Odell, John S., ed. Negotiating Trade: Developing Countries in the WTO and NAFTA. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Michael J. Schroeder
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) The NATO alliance is dedicated to the maintenance of the democratic freedoms and territorial integrity of its 26 European and North American member countries through collective defense. This alliance has been the dominant structure of European defense and security since its founding in 1949 and continues to serve as the most formal symbol of the United States’ commitment to defend Europe against aggression. Following the end of the cold war, the organization also took on a peacekeeping and stabilizing role within Eurasia. NATO was founded with the Washington Treaty of April 4, 1949, which was signed by Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Great Britain, and the United States. The 12 founding members were later joined by 14 others, including Greece and Turkey, which allowed the alliance to secure the Mediterranean. From the outset, NATO was intended to deter Soviet expansion into central and western Europe. The Washington Treaty reflected the will of the signatories to further democratic values and economic cooperation, to share the obligations of defense individually and collectively, to consult together in the face of threats, to regard an attack against one member as an attack against all members, and to collectively and individually assist the victims of an attack. The treaty also delineated the geographic boundaries of the alliance, created the North Atlantic Council to implement the treaty, made provisions for new members to join, governed ratification according to constitutional processes, and made provisions for review of the treaty. NATO’s civil and military organization materialized during 1949–95. The basic structures developed during this period remained into the 21st century. The civilian headquarters for the North Atlantic Council
Hungarian troops under NATO command stand on guard at NATO headquarters in Kosovo.
(NAC), which maintains effective political authority and powers of decision in NATO, is located in Brussels, Belgium. NATO’s secretary-general chairs the NAC and oversees the work of the International Staff (IS). Member countries maintain permanent representatives. The council serves as a forum for frank and open diplomatic consultation and the coordination of strategic, defense, and foreign policy among the alliance members. Action is agreed upon on the basis of common consensus rather than majority vote. Twice a year the defense ministers of the member countries meet at the NAC, and summit meetings involving the heads of state of each member country occur, during which major decisions over grand strategy or policy must be made. After the end of the cold war, the NAC was supplemented by the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC) as well as the NATO-Russia Joint Council. These newer bodies facilitate peaceful coordination and cooperation between NATO and the Russian Federation and other former members of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact alliance. The secretary-general of NATO also chairs the Defence Planning Committee (DPC), which is tasked with planning for the collective defense of the member countries. The DPC provides guidance to the alliance’s military authorities to improve common measures of collective defense and military integration. The DPC consists of the permanent representatives; like the NAC, the DPC also serves as a forum for meetings between the defense ministers of the member states twice a year. The senior military representatives of the member states form the Military Committee. The Military
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Committee is subordinate to the NAC and consists of the chiefs of staff of the member nations, who advise the NAC on all military matters and who oversee the implementation of the measures necessary for the collective defense of the North Atlantic area. The committee is supported by the International Military Staff (IMS), which meets twice a year at chiefs of staff level and more often at the national military representatives level. Until 2003 operational control of military forces operating under the NATO flag fell to Allied Command Europe and Allied Command Atlantic. In 2003 NATO undertook a major restructuring of its military commands. The Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) became the Headquarters of Allied Command Operations (ACO). ACT is tasked with driving transformation in NATO and establishing future capabilities, while ACO is responsible for current operations. Throughout the cold war NATO faced a powerful counter-alliance in the Warsaw Pact and turmoil within the organization itself. Indeed, in 1949 the alliance members could only marshal 14 divisions of military personnel against an estimated 175 Soviet divisions. At the NAC meeting in 1952, the members established a goal of fielding 50 divisions backed up by several thousand aircraft by the end of the year and 96 divisions by 1955. Also in 1952 the alliance introduced a new strategic concept: mass conventional defense of Europe coupled with long-range nuclear strikes against the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact members. However, the cost of raising the 96 divisions required to implement this strategy proved too great, and it was quickly abandoned. In 1953 Dwight Eisenhower put forward a new strategy, which focused more on nuclear deterrence. The new strategy came to be known as “massive retaliation” and would have involved extensive use of nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union and eastern Europe if their forces had broken through NATO’s conventional defenses in central Europe. Nuclear crises over Berlin and Cuba in the late 1950s and early 1960s suggested a need for a more gradual strategy than massive retaliation. President John F. Kennedy endorsed a strategy of “flexible response” in 1961–63, which favored deploying more conventional forces in central and northern Europe from both the United States and the other NATO members. Disagreement over this new strategy led France to withdraw from NATO’s integrated military command structure in 1967. NATO adopted a new doctrine in December 1967, which endorsed a flexible conventional and nuclear response to Soviet aggres-
sion. At the same time, the NAC adopted a new grand strategy favoring stable and peaceful relations with the Warsaw Pact countries. NATO was further challenged in the mid-1970s when the Soviet Union deployed large numbers of intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe that were capable of striking all of the European NATO allies. In response the members agreed to deploy Pershing II and cruise missiles in West Germany, the United Kingdom, the Low Countries, and Italy. However, a more cordial relationship between the alliance and the Warsaw Pact during the 1980s led to the dismantling of these intermediate weapons at the end of that decade. After the end of the cold war, NATO retained several important formal and informal functions. First, it serves as a permanent and institutionalized link between the United States and an ever-growing number of European allies. In addition, it prevents the renationalization of European defense policies. Moreover, NATO allows an institutionalized relationship with Russia and several of the former Warsaw Pact countries that have yet to join the alliance. Finally, it serves peacekeeping and stability functions in Europe and Asia. NATO invoked article 5 of the Washington Treaty for the first time following the September 11, 2001, attacks against the United States. Many NATO countries participated in the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Further reading: Gardner, Hall. NATO and the European Union: New World, New Europe, New Threats. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004; Kaplan, Lawrence S. NATO Divided, NATO United: The Evolution of an Alliance. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004; Rynning, Sten. NATO Renewed: The Power and Purpose of Transatlantic Cooperation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005; Schmidt, Gustav. A History of NATO: The First Fifty Years. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave, 2001; Sloan, Stanley R. NATO, the European Union, and the Atlantic Community: The Transatlantic Bargain Challenged. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005. Scott Fitzsimmons
Numeiri, Jaafar
(1930– ) Sudanese leader Jaafar Numeiri was born in January 1930 in Omdurman, the Sudan. In 1952 Numeiri graduated from the Sudan Military College, and in 1966 he gradu-
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ated from the U.S. Army Command College in Texas. Influenced by Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Free Officers Movement in Egypt, Numeiri joined a group of military officers sympathetic to pan-Arab, socialist ideas. In 1969 Numeiri, with the help of four other officers, orchestrated a coup to overthrow the Sudanese government. He then became the new prime minister and chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) and renamed the country the Democratic Republic of the Sudan. In July 1971 Sudanese communists staged a coup, and Numeiri was imprisoned. Shortly after his incarceration, Numeiri escaped and rallied loyal forces to put down the revolt and brutally crush the communists. Numeiri quickly moved to strengthen his base of political support by changing domestic and foreign policies. In the 1971 referendum on the presidency, Numeiri received a 98.6 percent affirmative vote and was sworn in for a six-year term as president. Spurred by Numeiri’s view of Arab socialism, in 1969 the Sudan agreed in the Tripoli Charter to coordinate foreign policies with Libya and Egypt. This union, which developed into a federation of Arab Republics, was extremely short-lived and was never really implemented. Numeiri inherited the problem of civil war in the southern Sudan, which had begun in 1955, even before Sudanese independence. A positive step toward resolving the war was taken in 1972 with the signing of the Addis Ababa Agreement. A cease-fire was declared in the south, and autonomy was granted to the nonMuslim southern region of the Sudan. In an effort to bolster support for his regime, Numeiri imposed sharia, Islamic law, over all of the Sudan in 1983. He also unilaterally decreed the division of the south into three regions corresponding to the old provinces; these decisions led to the resumption of the civil war. The mounting economic crisis led to urban riots, and spreading famines in rural areas marked the final phase of the Numeiri era. In April 1985, while Numeiri was out of the country on official business, the military launched a successful coup against his regime. Until 1999, when he was allowed to return to the Sudan, Numeiri remained in exile in Egypt while the Sudan continued to suffer through civil war, drought, famines, and mounting political repression from Islamist forces. See also Sudanese civil wars (1970–present). Further reading: Holt, P. M., and M. W. Daily. A History of the Sudan. London: Pearson Education Limited, 2000;
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Nunavut Territory, Canada As early as 1963, some natives of Canada’s Northwest Territories began agitating for greater autonomy within a nation where the vast majority live within 200 miles of the U.S. border. In particular the eastern Inuit (formerly called Eskimos) sought to control more aspects of their Arctic lives above the tree line. Not until 1999 was Nunavut (“our land” in the Inuktitut language) separated from other northern territories by an act of Parliament. On April 1, 1999, the Territory of Nunavut was born with Iqaluit, a city of 6,000, as its capital. Canada’s creation of Nunavut was a dramatic example of the growing awareness of indigenous rights in several nations. As in the United States, where Native Americans began rallying for recognition and respect, creating the American Indian Movement, aboriginal groups in Australia and Canada’s 630 officially recognized “First Nations” likewise began demanding greater self-determination. In 1973 after a long period of refusing to abide by most treaty rights, Canada changed course and signed six major treaties, including Nunavut’s. Straddling the Arctic Circle, and including Ellesmere and Baffin islands and Cape Dorset—a center of Inuit indigenous art—Nunavut has a population of 29,500, 80 percent of it Inuit, in 26 settlements spread across 770,000 square miles, a fifth of Canada’s total land mass. Most of this vast territory is inaccessible by road or rail; everything arrives, expensively, by air. The government of Nunavut, whose first premier was lawyer Paul Okalik, oversees an annual budget of about $500 million (U.S.), more than $18,000 per resident. About 84 percent comes from the federal government in Ottawa. Prior to the 1950s most Inuit were still leading traditional lives based on hunting and fishing. The cold war changed that. In an agreement with Canada, the United States built the Distant Early Warning, or DEW, Line, a system of radar installations designed to detect Soviet invasion across the North Pole. Although the DEW Line was useless against nuclear submarines or intercontinental ballistic missiles, it remained in place for 30 years. In 1985 Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney and U.S. president Ronald Reagan signed a new defense agreement. Abandoned DEW Line installations littered
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the Arctic landscape, in some cases leaching PCBs and industrial solvents into the ground. Around the same time as the DEW Line’s installation, Canada’s government began to move Inuit families into permanent settlements where they were offered health care, education, and other services, but at a price. Their new lifestyle pushed many Inuit communities from subsistence hunting to fur trapping for the cash needed to buy newly available “southern” goods. Reliable sources of income remain scarce in Nunavut, although mining, fisheries, tourism, and cultural products are being aggressively explored. The Internet plays a significant role, allowing Nunavut’s widely separated citizens to communicate with each other and the world via expensive satellite hookups that leaders hope to replace with fiber-optic installations. The emergence of global warming patterns in the Arctic poses both threats and opportunities. Some believe that the storied Northwest Passage, now frozen most of the year, will soon be navigable in summer, cutting almost 5,000 miles from a sea voyage between Europe and Asia. Nunavut’s government has discussed building a deepwater port and a 185-mile all-season road. On the other hand, climate change would likely further endanger Inuit ecology and traditions of self-sufficiency. See also environmental problems. Further reading: Dickason, Olive Patricia. Canada’s First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples from Earliest Times. 3d ed. Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press, 2002; Miller, J. R. Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens: A History of Indian-White Relations in Canada. 3d ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. Marsha E. Ackermann
Nyerere, Julius
(1922–1999) Tanzanian president Julius Kambarge Nyerere, born in 1922, attended a mission school in Tanganyika, Makerere University College in Tanganyika, and the University of Edinburgh. He returned to teach at a Roman Catholic school near
Dar es Salaam and was known as Mwalimu, or teacher. In 1954 he organized the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) and was elected to the legislature as Tanganyika prepared for full independence in 1961. Nyerere was elected as the first prime minister of the newly independent state and became President of the Republic in 1962. When Tanganyika and Zanzibar unified as Tanzania, Nyerere became the nation’s first president in 1964. In the 1967 Arusha Declaration, Nyerere instituted a state program of ujamaa (familyhood) based on collective sharing, traditional African values of the family, and collectivization of farms. Ujamaa, a form of African socialism, was supported by the People’s Republic of China, but in the global economic system, Nyerere’s ujamaa failed to bring economic growth, and in 1976 he was forced to admit defeat and end the program. Nyerere was an effective spokesperson in the campaign to end the apartheid system in South Africa and was also one of the founders of the Organization of African Unity (OAU). He hosted the African National Congress and Pan-African Congress, as well as other African nationalist movements that struggled against western imperial forces in Mozambique and Rhodesia. He was also a sharp critic of African dictatorships and publicly condemned Idi Amin’s dictatorship in Uganda. In the first contemporary military intervention by an African state against other, under Nyerere’s leadership, the Tanzania military attacked Amin and forced him out of power. Refusing to run for reelection, Nyerere retired voluntarily in 1985. He was succeeded by Ali Hassan Mwinyi and served as a sort of elder statesman in Africa until his death in 1999. See also African Union. Further reading: Mwakikagile, Godfrey. Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era: Biography of Julius Kambarage Nyerere (1922–1999). Dar es Salaam: Protea Publishing Co., 2002; Nyerere, Julius. Freedom and Socialism: A Selection of Writings and Speeches, 1965–1967. Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press, 1968. Janice J. Terry
O Olympics (1950–present) One of the goals of Baron Pierre de Coubertin—founder of the modern Olympic Games and organizer of the first modern games in 1896—was to encourage international understanding through sports, and help to create a more peaceful world. But after 50 years and two world wars—the bloodiest and most violent wars the world had yet seen—the Olympic dream of de Coubertin seemed very distant indeed. Too often the competition between nations would overshadow the competition of the athletes, and occasionally even the athletes themselves would be the center of controversy. In fact the Olympic Games found themselves, in 1948, in the middle of the geopolitics of the cold war. The world found itself poised on the brink of nuclear confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, and it seemed the world needed the Olympic Games and de Coubertin’s vision of peace now more than ever. Often, however, the Games would be just another proxy in the ideological battle between liberal democracy and communism. One of the most famous incidents of the 1956 Melbourne Games was the water polo match between the Soviet Union and Hungary. This match followed the Soviet quashing of the Hungarian uprising; because of political tension between the countries, the match was contested with such intensity that blood was seen in the swimming pool. But in addition to political theater, the games also provided many moments of genuine human drama,
Towering over the city, the Olympic Stadium in Montreal, Canada, was built for the 1976 Summer Olympics.
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where athletes strove to best one another under daunting pressure, after years of sacrifice and training. For the 1960 Summer Games, held at Rome, the games were broadcast live on television throughout Europe. Highlights of the games were Cassius Clay’s (Muhammad Ali) gold medal in boxing, and Abebe Bikila’s barefoot gold medal–winning performance in the marathon. The 1968 Winter Olympics were held at Grenoble, France, with many events spread around the region. The French skier Jean-Claude Killy, aged 24, won all three Alpine skiing gold medals. The 1968 Summer Games were held at Mexico City; the high altitude brought athletes in as much as a month early to acclimitize. Bob Beamon broke the world long jump record at the games; his record stood until 1991. The 1972 Summer Olympics were held at Munich, Germany, where U.S. swimmer Mark Spitz won seven gold medals and the Soviet Union’s gymnast Olga Korbut won three gold medals. These games also featured the controversial results of men’s basketball in which the American team believed that it had been cheated out of the gold medal. The games are best remembered, however, for the attack by Palestinian terrorists on the Israeli team, which resulted in the death of 17 people. At the 1976 Olympics held at Montreal, Canada, extra security was introduced. These games featured a boycott by African nations that protested the presence of New Zealand. The cause was a match between a New Zealand rugby team and a team from South Africa. This was in violation of a Commonwealth boycott of South Africa. The major stories of the games were Lase Viren winning both the 5,000 m and the 10,000 m again, and the Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci, aged 14, winning gold medals with the first-ever perfect score in Olympic gymnastic competition. At the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics, artificial snow was used, and the U.S. speed skater Eric Heiden won five gold medals. This also marked the presence of the first Chinese Olympic team since 1948 (prior to the Communists taking over). For the United States, these games will always be remembered for the “Miracle on Ice,” the victory of the American ice hockey team over the superior Soviet squad; for many, the American victory was seen as a win over communism. The 1980 Summer Games were held at Moscow, USSR, with 100,000 people at the opening ceremony. However, the United States led a boycott over the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in the previous year. The games were best remembered for the rivalry between British runners Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett; each won
one gold medal. The 1984 Summer Games were held at Los Angeles. The Soviet Union and its close allies organized a boycott in retaliation for the U.S.-led one four years earlier. The best-remembered events of these games included the 200 m record set by U.S. runner Carl Lewis, who also won the 100 m, the long jump and the sprint relay, matching the feats of Jesse Owens in 1936; and also another U.S. runner Mary Decker falling over in the women’s 3,000 m race and blaming the British/South African runner Zola Budd. The Los Angeles Olympics was also the first summer games to which China sent a team since 1948. There was also some international concern over the high level of advertising and commercial endorsements during the games. At the 1988 Summer Games held at Seoul, South Korea, there were no major boycotts or security problems in spite of worries about North Korea’s hostility to the games. In the track events, Florence Griffith-Joyner won three gold medals for sprinting, and Kristin Otto of East German won six gold medals. The Seoul Olympic Games also saw Ben Johnson, a Canadian sprinter, winning the 100 m race in world record time only to be stripped of his gold medal three days later after he failed a drug test. The 1992 Summer Olympic Games, held in Barcelona, Spain, saw the athletes of the former Soviet Union contesting as a single team for the last time, the return of South Africa, and also a team sent by the reunited Germany. In 1994 the Olympic Winter Games were held, this time at Lillehammer, Norway, beginning a different timetable for the Winter Olympics. At the Atlanta Summer Olympics in 1996, the centenary games, a bomb killed two people in the Centennial Olympic Park, but fears of international terrorists proved unfounded with a local man arrested for the bombing. At the Nagano Winter Olympics held in 1998, curling, women’s ice hockey, and snow boarding were all introduced as new Olympic sports. The Sydney Olympic Games in 2000 saw the summer games return to the Southern Hemisphere for the first time since 1956. The new events introduced included the triathlon and tae kwon do. The public cheered the presence of the team from East Timor at the Opening Ceremony, and also the North Korean and South Korean athletes who marched together. The highlight was Australian Aboriginal runner Cathy Freeman winning the women’s 100 m race in front of a home crowd. It saw the U.S. team win 40 gold medals, 24 silver medals, and 33 bronze medals; Australia’s team won 16 gold medals, 25 silver medals, and 17 bronze medals.
The 2002 Winter Olympic Games were held at Salt Lake City, Utah. The choice of Salt Lake City saw accusations of corruption and bribery that had first occurred following Atlanta being awarded the Olympics in 1989. A number of members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) were found to have received bribes in exchange for their votes, with files held in Salt Lake City revealing demands for and expectations of bribes by IOC delegates being made public. In a similar story, during the pairs figure skating competition, a judge was accused of collusion in awarding the gold medal to the Russian pair over the Canadian skaters; the situation was resolved when both figure skating pairs were awarded the gold. In 2004 the Summer Olympic Games were held at Athens, Greece, the site of the first of the modern Olympic Games held in 1896. These games witnessed several scandals, the majority of them involving performanceenhancing drugs. At least 20 violations were noted, the most of any Olympic Games. The issue of athletes taking drugs to gain an edge over rivals has become one of the dominant concerns of the games in the 21st century. In addition, the International Olympic Committee must also deal with the issue of letting professional athletes into a competition that was originally designed just for amateurs. Some critics contend that allowing professional athletes will give developed nations an unfair advantage over underdeveloped nations, while others contend that the records set at the Olympics will mean little unless the best athletes are allowed to compete. Despite these challenges—and the ever-present fear of terrorist attacks—the Athens Games saw a record 202 nations participate with over 11,000 athletes. The Olympic Games have proved to be a tempting avenue for nations to express a political point of view, or in more drastic fashion, commit violence in the name of one cause or another. Despite the intrusion of politics, it is perhaps a testament to de Coubertin’s dream that athletes the world over still strive together in peaceful competition along the ideals expressed in the Olympic motto: Citius, Altius, Fortius (Faster, Higher, Stronger). Further reading: Findling, John E., and Kimberley D. Pelle. Historical Dictionary of the Modern Olympic Movement. Westport, CT.: Greenwood Press, 1996; Gordon, Harry. Australia and the Olympic Games: The Official History. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1994; The Olympic Games, Athens 1896—Athens 2004 : All the Athletes, Events and Results Since 1896. London: Dorling Kindersley, 2004; Wallechinsky, David. The Complete Book of the Olympics.
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London: Penguin Books, 1984; Young, David C. The Modern Olympics: A Struggle for Revival. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Justin Corfield
Organization of American States (OAS) The Organization of American States (OAS) was founded on April 30, 1948, in Bogotá, Colombia, by 21 member states. Successor organization to the PanAmerican Union (1889–1947) and retooled to correspond to the changed security environment of the post–World War II era, the OAS was founded as a regional agency of the United Nations. Its purposes, according to its official charter, are “to strengthen the peace and security of the continent; to promote and consolidate representative democracy, with due respect for the principle of non-intervention; to seek the solution of political, juridical, and economic problems . . . ; [and] to eradicate extreme poverty,” among others. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., since its founding, in 2007 the OAS counted 35 member states, with Cuba suspended from participation since 1962, making 34 active member states. Mirroring the organizational structures of the United Nations, the OAS is governed by a General Assembly and Permanent Council and led by a secretary-general elected every five years. It has numerous affiliated organizations, organs, and entities, including the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights (IACHR, f. 1959); the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD, f. 1968); Inter-American Committee Against Terrorism (CICTE, f. 1999); and many others. Four “Protocols” introduced major revisions to the original OAS Bogotá Charter: the Protocols of Buenos Aires (1967), Cartagena de Indias (1985), Washington (1992), and Managua (1993). In 1994 the OAS organized the first Summit of the Americas, an event henceforth held every few years. Since its founding, the OAS has been dominated by the United States. During the the cold war era, its overriding concern was limiting Soviet and communist influence in the Western Hemisphere. Because Marxist, communist, and socialist doctrines proved popular in many parts of Latin America in the postwar era, OAS member states could pursue one of three options: openly defy the United States and adopt a socialist or
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Marxist-oriented government; ally with the United States in its anticommunist policies; or pursue a “third way” by aligning with neither the Soviet nor the U.S. bloc. In a handful of instances, OAS member states openly defied the United States, such as in Guatemala (1944–54), Bolivia (1952–64), Cuba (1961– ), Chile (1970–73), Nicaragua (1979–90), Grenada (1983), Panama (1989), and Venezuela (1999– ). In these and other cases, the United States violated the OAS charter regarding nonintervention, which stipulated that “No State or group of States has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other State” (Chapter IV, Article 19). More often, OAS member states cooperated with U.S. anticommunist efforts or sought to pursue a nonaligned stance in international affairs. The United States most commonly interpreted the latter as alignment with international communism and therefore a direct threat to its national security. In the post–cold war era, the OAS has exerted a greater degree of autonomy from U.S. domination. See also North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato); Warsaw Pact. Further reading: Shaw, Carolyn M. Cooperation, Conflict, and Consensus in the Organization of American States. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004; Sheinin, David. The Organization of American States. Oxford: ABC-CLIO, 1995. Michael J. Schroeder
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was established in 1960. Its first meeting was held in 1961, and, beginning in 1965, it was headquartered in Vienna. The charter members included Venezuela, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. Abd Allah al-Tariki, the Saudi director of petroleum affairs, played a leading role in the organization’s inception. OPEC membership was later expanded to include Libya, Algeria, Indonesia, Qatar, Nigeria, UAR, Gabon, and Ecuador. In 1968 the major Arab oil-producing nations formed OAPEC (Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries). OPEC members met on a regular basis to set quotas for production; however, the organization lacked the mechanism to enforce the quotas,
which were frequently ignored or openly flouted by individual producing nations. Nations with large populations such as Iran, Algeria, and Nigeria tended to push for price increases. Nations with small populations and lesser economic domestic demands preferred stable prices. Because of their production capacity and huge reserves, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait were able to increase production to prevent price increases or to keep prices low. In the 1980s Saudi Arabia’s proven oil reserves contained over 168 billion barrels, Kuwait had over 66 billion barrels, and Iraq had 43 billion barrels, as compared to 27.3 billion barrels in the United States. By the 1980s the United States was also importing over half its oil, as compared to only 25 percent in the early 1970s. In 1970 the new revolutionary government in Libya under Muammar Qaddafi forced production cuts to secure higher royalties. The petroleum companies—dominated by the so-called seven sisters, Western-owned corporations—bitterly opposed such pressure tactics, but because of ever-increasing demands they ultimately agreed to Libyan terms. The rest of the oil-producing nations soon followed suit and secured similar concessions. The price of oil then rose from $2 to $3 per barrel and then to $5 per barrel. During the peak of the oil boom in the 1970s Sheik Ahmad Zaki Yamani, secretary-general of OPEC from 1968 to 1969, served as the Saudi Arabian minister of petroleum. During the 1973 Arab-Israeli War King Faysal in Saudi Arabia was persuaded to use oil as a weapon, and cuts in supplies to those nations supporting Israel were announced. However, Faysal was a staunch anticommunist, and, when the United States and Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat argued that the oil boycott could increase the threat of communism in the Arab and Muslim world, King Faysal effectively ended the boycott by withdrawing Saudi support in 1974. In 1986, when Yamani supported raising oil prices, King Fahd removed him from office. With its huge reserves Saudi Arabia, and, to a lesser extent, Kuwait, could force price modifications by simply increasing production. By 1996 Saudi Arabia had become the world’s largest petroleum exporter. After the Iran-Iraq War Kuwait began to flood the market, exceeding its quota and driving down prices. The lower prices hurt Iraq at the very time that it was desperately trying to increase revenues to rebuild its economy; this was a contributing factor in the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the resulting First
Gulf War. Depressed prices, largely caused by high production by the Arab Gulf states and Saudi Arabia, also contributed to Ecuador’s withdrawal from OPEC in 1992. Owing to increased demand by burgeoning Indian and Chinese economies and ongoing wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East, the price of oil reached $60 per barrel in 2006 and prices continued to rise. High prices resulted in huge profits for Western oil companies as well as for the oil-producing nations. In one quarter of 2006 Exxon-Mobil, the world’s largest petroleum corporation, posted profits of over $7 billion. Although governments talked about cost control measures, alternative fuel sources, and conservation, few practical programs were adopted either in the
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West or in Asia. Thus it remained certain that petroleum would continue to be the world’s primary energy source for the foreseeable future. See also Gulf War, Second (Iraq War). Further reading: Alnasrawi, Abbas. Arab Nationalism, Oil and the Political Economy of Dependency. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991; Amuzegar, Jahangir. Managing the Oil Wealth: OPEC’s Windfalls and Pitfalls. London: Tauris, 2001; Blair, John M. The Control of Oil. New York: Vintage Books, 1978; Yergin, Daniel. The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991. Janice J. Terry
P Pakistan People’s Party The Pakistan People’s Party was founded by Berkeleyand Oxford-educated politician and lawyer Zulfikar Bhutto. During the presidency of General Ayub Khan, Bhutto served as a cabinet member and eventually as foreign minister. Ayub went to war with India over Kashmir in 1965, and eventually, with the intervention of the Soviet Union, signed the Tashkent Agreement, which restored prewar boundaries and diplomatic relations between the two countries. Bhutto opposed Ayub’s signing of the Tashkent Agreement, resigned his post, and formed the Pakistan People’s Party in 1967. The People’s Party championed the causes of socialism and democracy and denounced the Ayub regime as a dictatorship. Bhutto’s countrywide campaign against Ayub also drew support from businessmen, small factory owners, students, and rural dwellers. Under the pressure of mounting public unrest, Ayub resigned in 1969 and handed over power to General Yahya Khan. When elections were held in 1970, the People’s Party captured a majority of votes in West Pakistan, whereas a clear majority was won in East Pakistan by the Awami League of Sheik Mujibur Rahman. While the Awami League promoted greater autonomy for East Pakistan, the People’s Party argued for a strong centralized government. Differences between the two parties, and General Yahya’s inability to play a neutral role in the conflict, led to civil war. In 1971 East Pakistan seceded to become Bangladesh, and the People’s Party formed a government in Pakistan.
In power, the People’s Party stood for the nationalization of industry and education and for land reform. At the same time, Bhutto drafted the country’s fourth constitution, according to which he gave himself the title of prime minister, reduced the president to a figurehead, and granted himself powers that were as broad as those held by the military dictator whom he had opposed. Factionalism within the People’s Party, accusations of preferential politics, a tribal uprising in Baluchistan over the exploitation of local resources such as natural gas, and underrepresentation of Baluchis in the structures of the state undermined Bhutto’s government. The deaths of thousands in the uprising in Baluchistan, oppressive measures taken by Bhutto against political opponents, and accusations of having rigged the elections of 1977 led to a military coup by the army chief of staff General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. Bhutto was tried for orchestrating the murder of a political opponent, found guilty, and hanged on April 4, 1979. The leadership of the People’s Party was assumed by his daughter, Benazir Bhutto. After General Zia was killed in a plane crash, rumoured to be sabotage, the People’s Party came to power under Benazir Bhutto in the elections of 1988. However, her government was short-lived, she was arrested, and her government dissolved by Ghulam Ishaq Khan, the president at the time. The People’s Party next came to power in 1993, but the government was again short-lived; violence between ethnic and linguistic groups erupted frequently in Karachi, the government lost control of the urban 331
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center, and a power struggle between Benazir Bhutto and her brother Mir Murtaza Bhutto led to divisions within the party. In 1996, during his sister’s tenure as prime minister, Murtaza Bhutto was shot dead outside his residence in a police encounter. Opposition leaders accused the People’s Party of state terrorism against its political opponents, and the government was dismissed in 1996 again under charges of mismanagement and corruption. Benazir Bhutto continued to head the party in exile and upon her return to Pakistan in 2007. After her assaisination on December 27, her husband and 19-year-old son were appointed party co-chairmen. Further reading: Baxter, Craig, Yogendra K. Malik, Charles H. Kennedy, and Robert C. Oberst. Government and Politics in South Asia. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2002; Cohen, Stephen Phillip. The Idea of Pakistan. Washington, D.C. The Brookings Institution, 2004; Jones, Phillip E. The Pakistan People’s Party: Rise to Power. Karachi, Pakistan: Oxford University Press, 2003. Taymiya R. Zaman
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was established in 1964 under Ahmed Shukairy to represent Palestinian national demands for self-determination. In 1964 the Palestine National Council (PNC, or parliament) of 350 representatives met in East Jerusalem and voted on the Palestine National Charter, or declaration of independence, that declared historic Palestine as the homeland of the Palestinian Arabs. The charter has been amended several times. In 1968 the charter added that “armed struggle is the only way to l iberate Palestine.” In 1988 the PLO under Yasir Arafat’s orders agreed to drop the use of terrorism, recognize Israel’s right to exist, and essentially accept the establishment of the independent state of Palestine in the Occupied Territories of the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank—the so-called mini-state solution. Although some Palestinian groups opposed Arafat on these issues—the changes were agreed upon by the Palestine National Council, dominated by pro-Fatah Arafat supporters. Fatah (the Palestine National Liberation Movement) continued to dominate the PLO until 2006. After the Arab defeat in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Shukairy stepped down as chairman of the PLO, and Yasir Arafat, the leader of Fatah, the largest guerrilla group,
was elected chairman. Arafat remained the leader of the Palestinian national movement until his death in 2004. The PLO constantly struggled to remain independent from any Arab government and often found it difficult to steer a neutral course among rival Arab governments. Secular and all-inclusive, the PLO was an umbrella organization of some 10 different Palestinian groups, including the Marxist-Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), under Dr. George Habash, and the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PDFLP), led by Naif Hawatmeh; the Arab Liberation Front, supported by Iraq; and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine– General Command, a PFLP splinter group supported by Syria and sometimes Libya. The Palestine National Council operated until the 1993 Oslo Accords as a government in exile. The PNC comprised over 300 members, including fighters, union members, students, and women. The Palestine Central Council acted as an advisory board of approximately 60 representatives from all the various factions. The Executive Committee ran the PLO on a daily basis and comprised 15 members. In contrast to many other Arab governments, the PLO was highly democratic and engaged in lively and often public debates about strategies and tactics. The Palestine Liberation Army (PLA) was the PLO’s military wing and was often made up of fedayeen (selfsacrificers). By the 1970s the PLA had an estimated 10,000 fighters based mostly in Lebanon and Syria. After the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon the PLA was forced to scatter to a number of Arab countries. After the establishment of the Palestine Authority (PA) under the 1993 Oslo Accords, many soldiers were subsumed under the police force. The Palestine National Fund was the PLO’s economic arm. The fund was financed by donations from Palestinians in exile as well as taxes levied on Palestinians working in some Arab nations such as Libya. Individual Arab governments, such as oil-rich Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, also provided aid. Those regimes cut off aid after the PLO supported Saddam Hussein and Iraq in the First Gulf War. After the 1967 war, some groups within the PLO endorsed terrorist attacks on civilians. The PFLP simultaneously skyjacked four planes, landing them at a remote airstrip in Jordan in 1970; this incident precipitated “Black September,” when the Jordanian army attacked and defeated Palestinian forces and ousted the PLO, which then moved its base of operations to Lebanon. Attacks on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics
followed in 1972. The cycle of violence escalated as PLO groups launched raids inside and outside of Israel and Israel assassinated Palestinian leaders in the Middle East and Europe. As a result many innocent civilians on both sides were killed and wounded. Within the Arab world the PLO was recognized as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Although it was condemned as a terrorist organization by Israel and the United States, the PLO gradually gained international recognition, and, once it renounced terrorism and recognized Israel’s right to exist, even Israel and the United States entered into both public and secret negotiations with it. The PLO also established an extensive network of social services, including schools, orphanages, and hospitals. The Palestine Red Crescent was active in providing health and emergency care. SAMED provided an economic infrastructure of small businesses, workshops, and factories manufacturing textiles and even office furniture in Lebanon and Syria. Many of these institutions were destroyed in the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. In the 1970s the PLO also sponsored some agricultural cooperatives in Sudan, Somalia, and other African nations. It also sponsored art and cultural events. The Palestine Research Center, based in Beirut, focused on collecting materials and publishing books and articles on Palestinian history in order to preserve its cultural heritage. The center was also destroyed, and materials were taken by the Israelis in the 1982 war. The PLO also maintained information bureaus and had diplomatic representatives in major world capitals. In the midst of the 1987 Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, in the occupied territories, a rival Islamist organization, Hamas, emerged to challenge Fatah’s leadership. Financed by devout Muslims, especially in conservative Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, Hamas prospered first among poor Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip. Because it competed with the PLO, Israel initially ignored Hamas but subsequently found that in many ways it proved a more dangerous enemy. When the PLO, in spite of concessions to Israel, failed to achieve a viable Palestinian state, many more young Palestinians who had grown up under Israeli military occupation joined Hamas. When the Palestine Authority was established in the territories evacuated by the Israeli military in 1994, Arafat became the leader of the PA; he won a clear-cut majority as president in open and fair elections in 1996. However, the PA leaders, most of whom were members of Fatah who had spent years outside the Occupied Territories, were also accused of corruption and inefficiency. After Arafat’s death Mahmud Abbas was elected president in
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A banner featuring Yasir Arafat, who was the leader of the Palestinian national movement until his death in 2004.
2005. Fatah dominated the Palestinian parliament until it was defeated by the Islamist Hamas party in the 2006 elections and Ismail Haniyeh became prime minister. As the two main political forces—Fatah and Hamas—competed for power and the Israeli occupation of most of the territories continued, the future of the PLO remained uncertain. See also Arab-Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations; terrorism. Further reading: Cobban, Helena. The PLO: People, Power and Politics. London: Oxford University Press, 1984; Nasser, Jamal R. The Palestine Liberation Organization: From Armed Struggle to the Declaration of Independence. New York: Praeger, 1991; Quandt, William B., Fuad Jabber, and Ann Lesch. The Politics of Palestinian Nationalism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973. Janice J. Terry
Park Chung Hee
(1917–1979) South Korean president Park Chung Hee became president of South Korea after leading a military junta that instigated a coup in 1963. He held this position until his death in 1979. Born Pak Chong-hui in 1917 in the farming village of Sonsan in southeastern Korea, Park was the youngest of seven children of a poor farmer. His teachers recommended he continue his education at a normal school
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in the provincial capital, where he trained to become a grammar school teacher. After teaching for only two years Park enrolled in a Japanese military academy, in spite of being a Korean. During the last years of World War II, Park served as a second lieutenant in the Japanese army. He returned to South Korea after the end of World War II, received further military training, and became a captain in the army of the Republic of Korea (South Korea). Under suspicion of having cooperated with the communist forces in the north, Park resigned from the army, but was quickly called back into service. As soon as U.S. and Soviet troops withdrew from Korea in 1949, the Democratic People’s Republic (North Korea), under the leadership of Kim Il Sung, invaded the south in an attempt to reunite the nation. The resulting Korean conflict lasted until 1953 and involved not only the two Koreas but also troops from the United States, China, the USSR, and a number of other nations. At the close of the conflict a “demilitarized zone” was established roughly along the 38th parallel between the two countries. Park had continued to rise in the South Korean army to the rank of brigadier general. The combined effects of long years of brutal Japanese occupation and two wars left South Korea in severe distress. Its problems were exacerbated by the corrupt administration of President Syngman Rhee. On April 19, 1960, after Korean students rebelled against the government, President Rhee declared martial law, but the army did not support him. Rhee resigned, making way for an ineffective new government. After nine months, a military coup led by Park Chung Hee overthrew the new government and established the Military Revolutionary Committee as the nation’s governing body. The Revolutionary Committee was later renamed the Supreme Council for National Reconstruction (SCNR), which was invested with legislative, executive, and judicial powers. This military regime was tightly controlled by a few leaders with Park as chairman. A few months later the Political Activities Purification Law was passed, making it illegal for civilian leaders who had served in the First and Second Republics to engage in political activity. President Yun Po-Sun resigned in protest in March 1962, enabling Park to become acting president. Park and the Supreme Council undertook a drastic revision of Korea’s constitution, giving the president control of the National Assembly and giving him broad emergency powers. In August 1963 Park resigned from the military and joined the Democratic Republican Party. He easily won the fol-
lowing election and served as president of the Third Republic of Korea beginning in 1963. Although Park was no longer a member of the military, there was no doubt that the military upheld his regime. In the following years Park promoted an extensive industrialization program, instituted educational reform, and extended diplomatic relations, but his regime became increasingly authoritarian and repressive. Park Chung Hee was easily reelected president in 1967, and in 1969 he again instituted constitutional changes. This time he had the constitution amended to allow him to run for a third term, which he won in 1971. Student demonstrations and increasing dissatisfaction among the general public at the beginning of his third term led Park again to change the constitution, creating a stronger centralized power in the new Fourth Republic. Park called this the Yushin Honpop, or Revitalizing Reforms Constitution. When protests against his increased powers erupted they were quickly and violently quelled. Park Chung Hee was shot to death by the head of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency on October 26, 1979, allegedly accidentally as he was arguing with another dinner guest, but questions remain. See also Korean War (1950–1953). Further reading: Kim, Hyung-A. Korea’s Development Under Park Chung-Hee. Routledge/Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA) East Asia Series. London: Routledge, 2003; Chang, Yunshik ed. Transformations in Twentieth Century Korea. Routledge Advances in Korean Studies. London: Routledge, 2006. Jean Shepherd Hamm
Pathet Lao The term Pathet Lao (land of Lao) is generally used to describe the communist movement of Laos that began in 1945 and continued until 1975, when Laos became communist. It was one of three groups active in the politics of Laos, the other two being the Royal Lao Government (RLG) and the neutralists. Laos became a French protectorate in 1893. During World War II, the Japanese took control of Laos and declared it independent from French colonial rule on March 9, 1945. After Japan’s surrender, an independent Lao Issara (Free Laos) government was proclaimed on September 1, joined by the Pathet Lao,
with its strong nationalist leanings. There was a Lao committee section in the Indochinese Communist Party, and the separate existence of the Lao communist movement was established in 1945. The leader of the Pathet Lao, Prince Souphanuvong, had met the Vietnamese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh in 1945 and gained control of central Laos with the help of Vietnamese troops. The prince had nurtured the communist movement and was prepared to fight against the French, who had seized the capital city, Vientiane, in 1946. Laos was soon engulfed in the First Indochina War, and the Pathet Lao fought along with the Vietminh and the Khmer Rouge. The granting of limited independence on July 19, 1949, by the French was not accepted by the communists. However, Souvanna Phouma joined the new French-sponsored government in February 1950, where Souphanouvong proclaimed the parallel government of Pathet Lao along with its political organ, Neo Lao Issara (Lao Free Front). The French defeat at Dien Bien Phu on May 7, 1954, ended its colonial rule in Indochina. The Pathet Lao was recognized as a political party with control over Phong Saly and Sam Neua Provinces and began to consolidate its position. In December 1959 the military-dominated government of Phoumi Nosavan arrested the Pathet Lao members of the National Assembly, although Souphanouvong escaped. Laos was plunged into civil war. North Vietnam supported the Pathet Lao by sending arms, ammunitions, and troops. The U.S. government included Laos in its containment strategy defense against North Vietnam and China. Another attempt was made to bring peace to Laos with the Geneva Accords of 1962. But the attempt failed, and Laos was soon embroiled in the Vietnam War. A three-pronged coalition between the Pathet Lao, the royal government, and the neutralists did not last long, and the United States and Hanoi stepped up economic and military assistance to their respective allies. War in Laos became a sideshow in the Vietnam War, marked by heavy civilian death toll. The Pathet Lao military advance captured more territory and by 1972 controlled four-fifths of the land and half the population of Laos. Finally, the signing of the Paris Peace Agreements on Vietnam in 1973 led to accelerated negotiations in Laos. An agreement on Restoring Peace and Achieving National Concord on Laos was signed in the same year. With the United States out of South Vietnam, the North Vietnamese conquered the south in 1975. After the fall of South Vietnam, the Pathet Lao assumed effective
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control of Laos, and the coalition government in Laos was dissolved. On December 2, 1975, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (LPDR) was formed with Souphanouvong as president. Further reading: Evans, Grant. Lao Peasants Under Socialism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990; Mishra, Patit Paban. A Contemporary History of Laos. New Delhi: National Book Organization, 1999; Stuart-Fox, Martin. Buddhist Kingdom, Marxist State: The Making of Modern Laos. Bangkok: White Lotus Co, 1996; ———. A History of Laos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Patit Paban Mishra
Paz Estenssoro, Victor
(1907–2001) Bolivian revolutionary Leader of Bolivia’s Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionaria, or MNR) and a leading figure in the Bolivian revolution, Victor Paz Estenssoro was elected to the presidency four times and played a major role in Bolivia’s 20th century history. His overall political trajectory over four decades can be described as a gradual shift from the militant left to the neoliberal right, though whether that transformation entailed an abandonment of principles or growing pragmatism remains a matter of debate. Born in Tarija, Bolivia, on October 2, 1907, to a prominent family, he received his law degree from San Andrés University in La Paz in 1927. Thereafter he occupied a variety of administrative posts before serving as deputy in the National Congress, where he emerged as a leading figure in the opposition movement. In 1941 he cofounded the MNR, a leftist political party advocating far-reaching social and economic reforms. From 1943 to 1946, he served in the cabinet of Colonel Gualberto Villarroel but was forced out by domestic and U.S. opposition. Finishing third in the 1947 presidential elections, he triumphed in 1951, results nullified by the oligarchic regime of Mamerto Urriolagoitia. There followed a period of widespread social unrest, spearheaded by labor unions and peasant leagues, culminating in April 1952 in the overthrow of the government and the MNR’s assumption of power. In his first administration, Paz Estenssoro launched an ambitious program of social and economic reform— slashing the size of the military, extending the franchise,
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nationalizing the tin mines, breaking up large estates, and instituting universal public education—that met many of the demands of his constituency but galvanized right-wing opposition to MNR rule. That opposition mounted during the administration of his successor and MNR cofounder Hernán Siles Zuazo, as did the political polarization of the country. During Siles Zuazo’s presidency, Paz Estenssoro served as ambassador to Great Britain before returning to Bolivia to seek another term as president. He won handily, and in his second term struggled to keep the fragmenting MNR together and consolidate the gains of the revolution, while fending off a resurgent oligarchy and military and growing challenge from an increasingly militant left, led by his vice president, the labor leader and populist Juan Lechín. Expelling Lechín from the MNR and amending the constitution to permit his reelection, he won a third term in 1964 but was promptly ousted in the military coup of November 3, 1964, which ended the Bolivian revolution. Going into exile in Lima, Peru, he returned to Bolivia to lend his support to the left-leaning military regime of Hugo Banzer Suárez, an action that led to a break with Siles Zuazo and undermined his populist credentials. Soon repudiating the Banzer regime, in 1974 he was expelled from the country and went into exile in the United States. He returned in 1978 to run again for president, came in third, and after the results were nullified by the military, ran again in 1979, coming in second. The military again intervened, and in 1980 Paz Estenssoro again went into exile. In 1985 he was elected as president for the fourth and last time, during which he followed a neoliberal model, slashing state expenditures and reining in hyperinflation. He retired from politics in 1989 and died on June 7, 2001, leaving a complex political legacy. Further reading: Klein, Herbert S. A Concise History of Bolivia. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003; Morales, Waltraud Q. A Brief History of Bolivia. New York: Facts On File, 2003. Michael J. Schroeder
Peace Corps, U.S. The Peace Corps started in 1960 as part of U.S. efforts to win the cold war and as an attempt to better the lives of people in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. It is the brainchild of President John F. Kennedy. The
Peace Corps has sent more than 180,000 volunteers to over 135 countries in its many years of existence. The Peace Corps is one of the most enduring legacies of the Kennedy administration. Kennedy, then a candidate for the presidency, first mentioned the Peace Corps when he challenged students in a speech at the University of Michigan on October 14, 1960, to dedicate several years of their lives to helping people in the developing countries of the world. The students responded so enthusiastically that, in his inaugural address on January 20, 1961, Kennedy repeated his call. The president, concerned with the image of the “ugly American” who lacked compassion for those suffering from disease and the effects of poverty, argued that the Third World needed technical, managerial, and skilled labor. He wanted the United States to forge a new relationship with developing nations. Kennedy issued an executive order creating the Peace Corps on March 1, 1961. Sargent Shriver became its first director. On September 22, 1961, Congress passed legislation authorizing the Peace Corps to promote world peace and friendship. The agency aims to help the people of interested countries meet their need for trained workers, promote a better understanding of Americans among the peoples served, and promote a better understanding of other people on the part of Americans. By demonstrating the benefits of the U.S. system and capitalism, it also helped contain communism during the cold war. By respecting the cultures of their host countries, volunteers built a goodwill that was politically useful. Goodwill was also achieved through good works. Peace Corps volunteers have been road surveyors, nurses, agricultural technicians, engineers, and teachers as well as information technology experts and business development consultants. At the start of the new millennium, the agency also committed volunteers as part of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. From its beginnings the agency encouraged women to enroll. African Americans were also welcomed. However, not every volunteer was accepted by the agency. Since the start of the Peace Corps only one in five applicants has been accepted. A bachelor’s degree is the minimum education required for acceptance. The Peace Corps prefers more education as well as experience in a given field. At the start of the process volunteers are grouped into six programming categories: environment, agriculture, health, community development, business and skilled trades, and education. Volunteers are then interviewed and rejected if they are not U.S. citizens, are under 18 years of age, are under supervised
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A Peace Corps volunteer teaches children at the St. Vincents Home for Amerasian Children in Pup’yong, Korea. Peace Corps volunteers have traveled to more than 135 countries in virtually every continent around the world.
probation, have been involved in intelligence organizations such as the Central Intelligence Agency, possess dependents, or do not have skills needed by the agency. During the evaluation process the Peace Corps recruitment office looks at an applicant’s motivation, commitment, emotional maturity, social sensitivity, and cultural awareness. A background check is performed, and the agency assigns a worker to a particular nation in need of the volunteer’s skills. For those volunteers who are chosen, training programs are exhaustive, often running from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. seven days a week. The agency has written its own textbooks for every nation. The countries that have welcomed Peace Corps volunteers include such African nations as Cameroon, Chad, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Namibia, Niger, Senegal, and Tanzania. Latin American and Caribbean countries that have had Peace Corps volunteers include Belize, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Grenada, Guatemala, Haiti, Jamaica, Montser-
rat, and Nicaragua. In Asia volunteers have served in Fiji, Mongolia, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Western Samoa, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. In Europe volunteers have worked in Albania, Armenia, Bulgaria, Estonia, and Poland. Former Peace Corps countries include Afghanistan, Argentina, Brazil, India, Iran, Libya, Liberia, Pakistan, Somalia, South Korea, and Venezuela. Further reading: Latham, Michael E. Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and “Nation Building” in the Kennedy Era. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000; Peace Corps. At Home in the World: The Peace Corps Story. Washington, DC: GPO, 1996; Spaulding, Marcy L. Dancing Trees and Crocodile Dreams: My Life in a West African Village Journals from Two Years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mali. Fresno: Poppy Lane, 2004. Caryn E. Neumann
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Perón, Juan Domingo
(1895–1974) president of Argentina Subject of what many consider the most powerful political mythology in the modern history of Argentina— that of Peronismo (Peronism)—Juan Domingo Perón remains, despite his eminently public life, a deeply enigmatic figure—at once a populist, a man of the people, a friend of the working class, a dictator, a demagogue, an enemy and ally of the military, and the politician most responsible for a host of failed government policies that nonetheless continue to resonate among large segments of the populace. For three decades—from his burst onto the political stage in 1944–45 until his death in office in 1974—Perón dominated the Argentine political landscape, while his ambiguous and divisive legacy endured long after his death. Understanding modern Argentine history requires understanding the complex political legacy he bequeathed. Born on October 8, 1895, in a small town near Lobos in the province of Buenos Aires to a farming family, by some accounts out of wedlock, Perón entered the military at age 16 and rose gradually in rank. In 1929 he married Aurelia Tizón, who died nine years later of uterine cancer. In 1938, the year of his wife’s death, he traveled widely in Europe, where he came to admire the regime of Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. In 1943 he participated in a coup against the conservative regime of Ramón Castillo, and soon after became head of the Department of Labor—one of the weakest government ministries—which he used as a platform to build his own power base, forging alliances with segments of Buenos Aires’s powerful labor unions. Named vice president and secretary of war, on October 9, 1945, he was ousted and jailed by enemies in the military. There followed one of the defining events of modern Argentine history, when mass demonstrations by los descamisados (the shirtless ones) forced his release on October 17. Four days later he married the actress Eva (Evita) Duarte. Until her death, also from uterine cancer, in July 1952 at age 33, Evita was wildly popular among working people and coequal in creating and popularizing the Perón mythology. Building on his strong political momentum, Perón was elected president in February 1946. During his first term (1946–52), at the height of his political power, he implemented a host of populist policies intended to solidify his support among the country’s powerful labor unions, proclaiming his populist vision a “third position” between capitalism and communism. His policies sparked rising government debt and growing
economic crisis while polarizing Argentine society into Peronist and anti-Peronist factions. Reelected in 1951, he was ousted in September 1955 in a military coup. For the next 18 years he lived in exile, mainly in Spain, in 1961 marrying nightclub singer María Estela Martínez, or Isabel Perón. Following years of military dictatorship marked by growing social discord and political polarization, he returned to Argentina in 1973 and won his third term as president. He died in office on July 1, 1974, his wife and vice president, Isabel, succeeding him until her ouster by a military coup in March 1976. Further reading: Crassweller, Robert D. Perón and the Enigmas of Argentina. New York: Norton 1987; Turner, Frederick C. and José Enrique Miguens, eds. Juan Perón and the Reshaping of Argentina. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1983. Michael J. Schroeder
Philippine revolution (1986) A popular, spontaneous, nonviolent, and distinctly religious movement restored democracy to the Philippines, on February 22–25, 1986. After nearly 400 years of colonization by Spain and the United States of America in the first half of the 20th century, the Philippines enjoyed a democratic form of government until Ferdinand Marcos became president in 1965. However, in 1972 Marcos declared martial law, citing communist insurgency but in reality because he faced the prospect of defeat in the presidential elections. Martial law (lifted in 1981) was disastrous for the country. Government-sanctioned atrocities occurred frequently, the media was rigidly controlled, and anyone suspected of being a dissident was imprisoned. One such political prisoner was Benigno Aquino Jr. (nicknamed “Ninoy”), a brilliant politician who was elected to the National Senate at the age of 35 and became Marcos’s most serious rival to the presidency. He was imprisoned for eight years. In 1980 Aquino was allowed to travel to the United States for surgery, and, for the next three years, he lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his family. But he was assassinated in 1983 upon returning to the Philippines. An independent panel investigating his murder put the blame on a military conspiracy involving “some of the country’s highest ranking officers,” but without giving any names. The event galvanized the nation as
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Expectedly, Marcos declared himself the winner. But the People Power nonviolent revolution would eventually triumph by the defection of two men in Marcos’s camp: the civilian defense minister and a highranking general of the armed forces. They were supported by the archbishop of Manila, Cardinal Jaime Sin, who called on Filipino civilians for help. At first a trickle, then hundreds of thousands of ordinary Filipinos from all economic strata responded, converging on the streets with no weapons, calling on the advancing soldiers and marines to join the protest. first woman president Within four days, the number of defecting soldiers made it clear that Marcos no longer controlled the military. The United States asked Marcos to step down from power and to desist from military action. Fearing for their lives, Marcos and his family were flown out of the country and took refuge in Hawaii. Corazon Aquino was inaugurated as president on that day, the first woman president of the Philippines. The popular and nonviolent People Power revolution of 1986 restored democracy, but it did not solve all the problems of the country. Twenty years later, the country still faces many political, economic, and social ills. But what People Power demonstrated was the moral superiority of nonviolent and prayerful resistance to political tyranny and moral evil. See also Marcos, Ferdinand and Imelda. Philippine president Corazon Aquino addresses workers at a rally at Remy Field concerning jobs for Filipino citizens.
millions of Filipinos mourned his death and led to the “People Power” movement. However, it took three more years before People Power would become a reality. In the interim, opposition to the Marcos regime became more frequent and vocal. Public rallies and demonstrations were often met by military reprisals. Eventually the military, too, became divided, with some calling for reform. Late in 1985 Marcos called a “snap” presidential election on February 7, 1986. It was a move calculated to restore his popular mandate. Many people welcomed this, although it was a foregone conclusion that there would be massive electoral fraud. Corazon (“Cory”) Aquino, the assassinated leader’s widow, with neither political aspirations nor experience emerged as the popular candidate.
Further reading: Forest, Jim and Nancy. Four Days in February: The Story of the Nonviolent Overthrow of the Marcos Regime. Basingstoke, UK: Marshall Pickering, 1988; Komisar, Lucy. Corazon Aquino: The Story of a Revolution. New york: George Braziller, 1987. Jake Yap
Pinochet Ugarte, Augusto
(1915–2006) general and dictator of Chile President and dictator of Chile from the bloody overthrow of democratically elected Marxist president Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973, until his resignation from the presidency in March 1990, General Augusto Pinochet (pee-noh-CHET) ranks among the most controversial figures in modern Chilean history. The years of his rule as president and dictator (1973– 90) saw large-scale human rights abuses by the Chilean military, with an estimated 3,200 dissidents killed and
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disappeared, and thousands more imprisoned, tortured, and exiled. The 17 years of his dictatorship also saw major neoliberal reforms of the country’s economy, as promoted by the "Chicago Boys," that resulted in the privatization of many state industries and entitlement programs—most notably the social security system— and that severely circumscribed the role of the state in the national economy. A polarizing figure, revered by some and decried by others, Pinochet left a complex legacy of state repression and radical economic reform with which Chileans continue to grapple. Born in the Pacific port city of Valparaiso on November 25, 1915, the son of a custom’s inspector, Pinochet graduated from Santiago’s military academy in 1937. In 1971 he was appointed to the key post of commander of the Santiago army garrison. In the midst of rising social and political tensions sparked by Allende’s socialist policies, Pinochet garnered the trust of the president, who in August 1973 named him commander in chief of the army. Three weeks later Pinochet led the coup that resulted in Allende’s overthrow and imposition of military dictatorship. The months following the coup were the most violent of the regime, with tens of thousands of Allende supporters rounded up, interrogated, and imprisoned, and hundreds executed. Among the most enduring images of the Pinochet dictatorship was the scene in the Santiago’s main sports stadium in late 1973, used as a clearinghouse for recently arrested prisoners, with a sunglasses-clad Pinochet overseeing the detention and interrogation process. In 1980 a new constitution made the nation’s military the “guarantors of institutionality” and imposed a range of limitations on citizens’ political activities. In 1988 a plebiscite showed a solid majority opposed to continuing dictatorship, and in 1990 he stepped aside to permit national elections and a return to democratic government. The human rights violations of the Pinochet regime were documented in the final report of the National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation (the Truth Commission, or Rettig Report), presented in February 1991 to then-President Patricio Aylwin. On stepping down as army chief, Pinochet was granted a permanent seat in the country’s Senate, immunizing him from prosecution. Human rights activists pursued a novel legal strategy by charging him for genocide, torture, and kidnapping in a Spanish court. In October 1998 he was arrested in Britain on the charges. There ensued a 16-month legal battle over the Spanish court’s extradition order. In 2000 he returned to Chile and was declared unfit to stand trial due to mental and physical ailments. Living the rest of his life in seclusion with his family, dogged by lawsuits and legal charges, he died on
December 10, 2006. Public opinion polls after his death showed that slightly more than half of Chileans believed that he should have been prosecuted for his regime’s human rights violations. Further reading: Report of the Chilean National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation. Translated by Phillip E. Berryman. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993; Stern, Steve J. Battling for Hearts and Minds: Memory Struggles in Pinochet’s Chile, 1973–1988. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. Michael J. Schroeder
Poland (1991–present) Poland was the most rebellious of the Soviet-bloc countries, with mass protests in 1956, 1968, 1970–71, 1976, and 1980–81. The society was heavily influenced by the Catholic Church, and the memory of the Polish pope, John Paul II, remains very strong. After the political changes of 1990, Poland made fast progress toward achieving a market economy and a democratic government and making Polish democracy work effectively by civic engagement in public discourses. Roundtable talks on Poland’s first free elections took place in 1988–89. In April 1989 the communist leadership agreed with the Solidarity leadership on competitive elections, where just 35 percent of the seats were open to genuine competition. During the following presidential elections, in November 1990, Lech Wałe˛sa—a former electrician, shipyard worker, and leader of the opposition since 1980—became the first democratically elected president of Poland. Later on, the parliamentary elections were held with the participation of over 100 political parties. The country saw a rough democratic start, and elections were declared again in 1993. At that time, the successor of the communist party, the Alliance of the Democratic Left (SLD), received the largest share of the votes. In November 1995, in the second presidential elections, Aleksander Kwasniewski defeated Wałe˛sa and became the second president of democratic Poland. The leading political issue of the last years of the 1990s was negotiations with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Poland joined the defense organization in 2000. During subsequent years, talks with the European Union (EU) regarding the Polish accession received much attention. Poland joined the EU in May 2004.
In the presidential elections of 2000 and the parliamentary elections of 2001, the successor of the Communist Party, the SLD, won. However, that government lost popularity rapidly after it failed to fulfill promises to upgrade the road network of the country and to undertake a profound reform of the national health system. In addition, these years saw corruption scandals. Right after Poland’s admission to the EU, the cabinet resigned and a new cabinet was formed, with Marek Belka as prime minister. Secrecy in the governing party and scandals contributed to the outcome of the presidential and parliamentary elections of 2005, when the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) and Citizens Platform (PO) became the largest parties in the Polish parliament, the Sejm. PiS leader Jarosław Kaczynski declined the option of becoming prime minister because his twin brother, Lech Kaczynski, was still in the race for the presidential seat. Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz was nominated for that post; however, Jarosław Kaczynski is still considered one of the most influential persons in contemporary Polish politics. Lech Kaczynski did win the presidential election. The main emphasis of his presidency was on combining modernization with tradition and Christianity. The influence of the Kaczynski might increase European skepticism and the focus on Polish Catholic traditions in the near future. In the second half of the 1980s Poland’s economy struggled with mounting macroeconomic imbalances, which culminated in 1989, when hyperinflation and an extremely high central budget deficit hit the country. After that time, Poland was regarded as one of the most successful transition economies in eastern and central Europe. The country’s GDP per capita rose from 31 percent of the EU average in 1992 to 41 percent by the end of the 1990s. One of the challenges of the economic policy was transforming the excessive and poor investment inheritance from the command economy, which was achieved by injecting new technologies into old plants. In addition, most industry subsidies were removed, and the market was opened up to international cooperation. Between the early 1990s and the mid-2000s, the country received over $50 billion in direct foreign investment. With the collapse of COMECON in 1990, Poland had to reorient its trade, and in few years Germany had become its most important trade partner, followed by other EU countries. Despite all of Poland’s economic successes, there has been an unusually complicated situation in Polish agriculture and rural areas. Poland was the only country in the Soviet bloc whose farmland remained for the most part in private hands.
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The farmers’ dramatically low income levels affected their farms in terms of production and development. Over half of the farms produce only for their own needs, with minimal commercial sales. Despite its small farms, Poland is the leading producer of potatoes and rye in Europe and a large producer of sugar beets. Unlike the dramatic developments in Polish politics and economics, its society changed at a different pace. The political transformation of 1989–90 was the culmination of radical social change, which profoundly affected Polish society. New social movements and the fundamentals of a civic society were in place by the late 1980s. Disappointment in the society in the early 1990s was in large part due to high expectations of the rapid political and economic changes, which exceeded the possibilities of the weak economy. A significant share of Polish society is Euro-skeptic, opposing globalization and stressing traditional national and Catholic values. Polish cultural life flourished even under communist rule, but the political and economic changes opened up new possibilities for generations of artists. Polish jazz, with its special national flavor, is known worldwide, and the film industry of the country has been one of the most important in Europe. Polish avant-garde theater, along with various high-culture music festivals and art exhibitions, are world famous, and Polish popular culture has been receiving growing attention and sponsorship within the country as well. See also Eastern bloc, collapse of the; Reagan, Ronald. Further reading: Blazyca, George, and Ryszard Rapacki, eds. Poland into the New Millennium. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2001; Dryzek, John S., and Leslie Holmes. Post-Communist Democratization: Political Discourses across Thirteen Countries. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002; Murrel, Peter. “What Is Shock Therapy? What Did It Do in Poland and Russia?” In Comparative Politics, Critical Concepts in Political Science. Howard J. Wiara, ed. Vol. 4., pp. 238–69 London: Routledge, 2005. Roberts, K., and Bohdan Jung. Poland’s First Post-Communist Generation. Aldershot: Avebury, 1995. Viktor Pal
Pol Pot
(1925–1998) Cambodian communist leader Pol Pot (born Sar Saloth) came from a rather wealthy peasant family in the central Cambodian Kampong Thum
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Province. Through family connections to the Cambodian Royal Court, he was able to gain access to a formal education in both Cambodia and France. He was not the best student and ended up in a technical school. While studying in France, Pol Pot joined several communist organizations and student groups, including the Cercle Marxist, whose members would later provide the leadership of the Cambodian Communist Party. Antidemocratic policies imposed by Cambodian King Sihanouk and rampant corruption in the electoral process after the 1954 Geneva Conference convinced the left that they would never gain control over Cambodia through peaceful means. A 1962 government roundup of Cambodian leftist and communist leaders left Pol Pot in charge of the party. In 1963 Pol Pot went into hiding in the jungle near the Vietnamese border and contacted the North Vietnamese government hoping that it would aid his communist movement and revolutionary aims. Help was not forthcoming due to North Vietnam’s agreements with Sihanouk over their use of the border for the Ho Chi Minh Trail. It was in the border camps that Pol Pot fashioned the Khmer Rouge ideology. The Khmer Rouge held that Cambodia’s rural peasant farmers were the working-class proletarians. This was necessary because Cambodia had almost no industrial working class and because most of the Khmer Rouge leaders came from peasant backgrounds. In 1968 Pol Pot transformed himself into an absolutist leader and minimized collective decision making in the Khmer Rouge leadership. This coincided with a continuing growth of the party due to successive waves of government repression, which also shifted the loyalty of the peasants toward the Khmer Rouge. In 1970 the national assembly voted to remove Sihanouk from power and expel the Vietnamese from the border region. This caused an antigovernment alliance between the Khmer Rouge and Sihanouk. Their main military force consisted of 40,000 Vietnamese sent to secure access to the Ho Chi Minh Trail. During this time, the Khmer Rouge began to “liberate” significant portions of Cambodia and remolded society into their view of agrarian paradise. Communes were organized, private property was banned, and the trappings of wealth were removed from the people. They evacuated all cities and towns they controlled and sent their people to work in rice fields. Former military and government officials, along with the rich and those who had an education, were “purged” (murdered). These policies were applied to the entire country and even Khmer Rouge members after Phnom Penh fell in 1975. Eventually, more than one-quarter of Cambodia’s
population of 8 million was killed through starvation, sickness, or murder. Education all but ceased after most intellectuals were murdered. In late 1978 Vietnam invaded Cambodia after a series of border clashes instigated by the Cambodians. A new Vietnamese-backed regime was installed in January 1979 after Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge fled the capital for the Thai border region. For the next 19 years, Pol Pot led an insurgency against the new government until his death. The legacy of the Khmer Rouge has been continuing misery brought on by their sowing of millions of Chinese-supplied land mines over significant areas of Cambodia. See also Carter, Jimmy; Nixon, Richard; Vietnam War. Further reading: Chandler, David P. Brother Number One: A Political Biography of Pol Pot. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992; Kiernan, Ben. The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power and Genocide Under the Khmer Rouge 1975–1979. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002; Short, Philip. Pol Pot: The History of a Nightmare. London: John Murray, 2004. Collin Boyd
Portugal (1930–present) Portugal has been a land of paradoxes. For much of the 20th century, it was simultaneously a weak, agrarian, poverty-stricken, isolated state on the periphery of Europe and the seat of a vast colonial empire. It had used an alliance with Britain to sustain this paradox for a long time. Portugal relied on Britain to keep Spain at bay and to secure its claim to its colonial holdings. In return, the Royal Navy enjoyed access to a far-flung network of colonial ports to be used as coaling stations. Modern nationalism in Portugal dates from the popular reaction to the British ultimatum of 1890, which foiled a Portuguese scheme to connect Angola and Mozambique by seizing the intervening territory. For half of the 20th century, the country was governed by Western Europe’s most enduring authoritarian regime. Then, in 1974–76, it became the only North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) country to experience a fullfledged social revolution. After approaching the precipice of civil war, Portuguese society backed down and built a working democracy. Portugal overthrew its monarchy in 1910. The country established a new constitution the following year and became Europe’s third republic, after Switzerland
and France. There were several coups over a 16-year period. In reaction to labor unrest in the early 1920s, extra-parliamentary right-wing organizations arose. These groups lent their support to a bloodless military coup in 1926. Two years later, in the wake of financial crisis, the military regime brought an economics professor out of the obscurity of the University of Coimbra and named him minister of finance. António de Oliveira Salazar had a limited set of priorities in that office: to generate a budget surplus and to stockpile gold. He proved to be quite effective at what he set out to do. He quickly overshadowed a succession of military prime ministers and won supporters among officers, clergy, businessmen, bankers, and landowners. The New State The military regime was a little more stable than its predecessor. Salazar, whose star was already rising within the regime, founded a new party in 1930, the National Union (União Nacional), to unify the regime’s supporters. In 1932, as the Great Depression advanced, he was appointed prime minister, a position he would hold for the next 36 years. Salazar promulgated a new constitution in 1933, establishing the New State (Estado Novo). The National Assembly, consisting of the Chamber of Deputies and the Corporatist Chamber, had severely limited powers. Salazar selected nearly all candidates personally. Rights and liberties proclaimed by the constitution were nullified by government regulation. Various sectors of society were organized from above in corporatist fashion. The political police maintained surveillance over potential opponents, many of whom fled into exile. Censors erased any hint of dissent. From 1936 to 1944 Salazar was also minister of war. In that position he found he could shrink the size of the army and control officers’ salaries, transfers, retirements, and even marriages. Officers were encouraged to marry wealthy women so that their salaries could be kept low. A politicized government-run militia, the Portuguese Legion (Legião Portuguesa), partially offset the army’s influence. Thus it was Salazar, not the military, who consolidated the authoritarian regime. His was a conservative, corporatist police state, but it was not a true fascist state. It did not seek to overthrow traditional elites or mobilize society around its goals. Rather, Salazar sought to demobilize—or even freeze—society and to reject modernity. Rather than exalting war, Salazar strove for a kind of neutrality. In any event,
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his austere policies left the armed forces with a very low level of effectiveness. Spain and World War II Salazar viewed Spain’s leftist Popular Front government as a threat. When General Francisco Franco rebelled against it in 1936, launching the Spanish civil war, Portugal officially followed the lead of Britain and France by promising nonintervention, but surreptitiously funneled aid to Franco. Franco’s agents were allowed to operate on Portuguese territory. Thousands of volunteers went to Spain to fight against the Republican cause. At the end of the war, in March 1939, Salazar and Franco signed a treaty of friendship and nonaggression, known informally as the Iberian Pact. Salazar declared Portugal’s neutrality in World War II on September 1, 1939, the very day Poland was invaded. He also sought to keep the war as far away as possible by bolstering Spain’s neutrality. In the wake of its civil war, Spain was in no condition to take an active role in World War II, but Portugal’s position highlighted the potential costs of even a passive role, as in allowing the Germans to pass through to take the British stronghold of Gibraltar. The strategic situation changed for the Iberian Peninsula as the Germans became tied down in the Soviet Union and the Allies moved into North Africa and Italy. It was now highly unlikely that Spain would intervene on Germany’s side. Salazar allowed himself to be persuaded to join the Allied cause, albeit passively. From the Allied perspective, the Azores were the key objective. Situated in the mid-Atlantic, these Portuguese islands would be useful bases both for antisubmarine warfare and for refueling transatlantic flights in the buildup prior to the great invasion of France. First Britain, and then the United States, acquired access to facilities there, and Portugal ceased selling tungsten to Germany while still claiming to be neutral. Postwar Portugal Portugal’s shift put it on the winning side, improving its bargaining position in postwar Europe and increasing its chances of getting back East Timor and Macao, which had been occupied by the Japanese. Still, the semifascist state was in an ambiguous position after the war. It began to describe itself as an “organic democracy” rather than a “civilian police dictatorship,” an expression that had been used in the 1930s. Portugal was not invited to the San Francisco conference, which established the United Nations, and was denied UN membership until 1955. Portugal was,
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however, a founding member of NATO chiefly because the United States still wanted access to bases in the Azores. Portugal’s relations with the United States and NATO replaced its traditional alliance with Britain. Unlike Britain’s earlier guarantee of Portugal’s overseas territories, however, NATO’s area of responsibility was expressly restricted to Europe to avoid its being drawn into colonial wars. A certain “softening” marked the Salazar regime in the postwar era. There was no real institutional change, but some of the more fascistlike institutions were allowed to erode. On the other hand, after a dissident general managed to win 25 percent of the vote in presidential elections in 1958, the direct election of the president was discontinued. A degree of economic liberalization led to the growth of the service sector and a larger middle class in the 1960s. Industry, previously limited to textile production, added electrical, metallurgical, chemical, and petroleum sectors. A stroke immobilized the dictator in 1968, although he lingered for two more years. His successor was Marcello José das Neves Caetano, who, not coincidentally, had also succeeded him in his chair at the University of Coimbra. Caetano brought technocrats into the regime, retired some of Salazar’s old-school hangers-on, and favored economic development over cultivated stagnation, but again the basic system remained. Africa War was spreading in the African colonies of Portuguese Guinea (Guinea-Bissau), Angola, and Mozambique. The policy of the New State had been to instill pride among the Portuguese in their empire, a legacy of Portugal’s glory in the age of discovery. The state also reasserted national control over the colonies, where foreign corporations had conducted much of the economic activity. African farmers were compelled to shift from subsistence crops to cotton for the Portuguese market in the 1930s, and more so as World War II disrupted other trade sources. Portuguese investment in Africa began to take off in the years after the war. Portuguese emigration tripled the white population of Mozambique and quadrupled that of Angola between 1940 and 1960. Initially, even the outbreak of the wars of national liberation spurred economic growth, as the state responded by boosting civil and military investments. All of these changes disrupted the lives of the Africans, and many of them also undermined the few existing bases of support for Portuguese rule. In 1961 a revolt against forced cotton cultivation broke out in Angola. Fighting escalated with retributions and counterretributions; it spread to Guinea in 1963 and Mozambique in 1964. The government quickly repealed
forced cultivation and forced labor. It also mobilized troops and dispatched them to Africa. Large numbers of Africans were concentrated in strategic villages (aldeamentos) where their actions could be controlled. In 1961 the United States called on Portugal to decolonize. The insurgents sought and received military aid from the Soviet bloc and China. In order to fight the leftist insurgency most effectively, the military high command assigned junior officers to read the political tracts of African revolutionary leaders, such as Amílcar Cabral of Guinea-Bissau. To their ultimate surprise, a sizable number of junior officers were convinced that the insurgents were right. Some of them also concluded that Portugal itself was an underdeveloped Third World country in need of “national liberation.” Revolution of the Carnations A diverse group of disgruntled junior officers in 1973 formed a clandestine political organization, the Armed Forces Movement (Movimento das Forças Armadas, MFA). On April 25, 1974, the MFA deposed Caetano. The New State collapsed without resistance. Holding red carnations, demonstrators had persuaded other military units not to resist. The MFA then stepped back, but this proved only temporary. The young officers would soon be in the midst of a political free-for-all to determine the direction of the revolution. They too coalesced into a number of factions built around competing political orientations and personalities. Captain Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho became the focal point of one radical faction, once styling himself as the Fidel Castro of Europe. Colonel Vasco Gonçalves began as a moderate, but moved to a position close to the Portuguese Communist Party. A moderate faction, later dubbed the Group of Nine, formed around Lieutenant Colonel Melo Antunes. Finally, further behind the scenes until the last stages of the revolution were the “operationals,” a group of officers largely concerned with professional military matters and associated with Lieutenant Colonel António Ramalho Eanes. The Junta of National Salvation (Junta de Salvação Nacional) was formed from moderate senior officers. General António de Spínola, a former military governor of Guinea-Bissau, was invited to lead the junta as provisional president of the republic. Palma Carlos, a liberal law professor, was named provisional prime minister. Political parties of all stripes were legalized, and political prisoners were released. Political exiles streamed back into the country. Cease-fires were arranged in Africa. In one of the most fateful decisions of the new regime, the leaders promised elections for a constituent
assembly within a year, the first real elections in over half a century, and with universal suffrage and proportional representation. The revolution had released popular tensions that had been building up for decades. Turmoil spread quickly in the newfound freedom, and rival power centers competed to control the situation. Spurred on by the newly legalized Portuguese Communist Party, Maoists and other leftist groups and workers staged strikes and seized factories, shops, and offices. Students took over schools and denounced teachers for “fascist sympathies.” Services broke down, and shortages became common. Right-wing groups, especially in the conservative rural north, began to mobilize and arm themselves. In July the Palma Carlos government collapsed amid the turmoil, and prominent members of the MFA moved into key positions. Carvalho was promoted to brigadier general and put in charge of the army’s new Continental Operational Command (Comando Operacional do Continente, COPCON), which became the principal arbiter of order as the police disintegrated. Colonel Vasco Gonçalves was appointed to the position of prime minister. The MFA radicals regularly overruled Spínola’s decisions and also forced him to accept the independence of the colonies. In September a major demonstration planned by Spínola to bolster his position forced a confrontation with COPCON, which resulted in Spínola’s resignation. General Francisco da Costa Gomes, who was more sympathetic to the left, assumed the presidency. The most radical phase of the revolution began in March 1975. Spínola launched an unsuccessful coup attempt on March 11. In response, the radical wing of the MFA abolished the Junta of National Salvation and formed the Revolutionary Council (Conselho da Revolução), some 20 officers responsible only to the MFA Delegates’ Assembly. The council nationalized the banking system, press, utilities, and insurance companies. With elections for the Constituent Assembly scheduled for April 25, the anniversary of the revolution, the MFA pressed a “constitutional pact” on the six largest parties, which recognized the permanent supervisory role of the MFA in a “guided” democracy. Turnout was high for the elections, in which 12 parties competed, but the outcome shocked the radicals. The moderate Socialist Party came in first with 37.9 percent, followed by the right-of-center Social Democrats (originally called the Popular Democrats) with 26.4 percent. The Communists, the electoral ally of the MFA radicals, garnered only 12.5 percent.
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talk of civil war The MFA responded during the “hot summer” (verão quente) of 1975 by styling itself as a national-liberation movement. In the south, landless agricultural laborers seized large estates and declared them collective farms. Moderate Socialists and Social Democrats resigned from the government. Small freehold farmers formed armed groups, held counterrevolutionary demonstrations, and bombed the offices of leftist parties. Plans were drawn up for a possible alternative government in the north. COPCON was beginning to disintegrate, and individual army units were under pressure to declare their political orientation. Both society and the MFA itself were becoming increasingly polarized, and there was talk of civil war. As a consequence of the growing tension, Gonçalves and his government were pressed to resign at the end of August, and they did so. A new, more moderate provisional government was installed. Dissatisfied with this outcome and determined not to “lose” the revolution, radical paratroopers attempted to organize a coup in November 1975. Like Spínola’s coup attempt, however, this backfired. Lieutenant Colonel António Ramalho Eanes, of the MFA’s professional military faction, led a purge of the MFA radicals. COPCON was disbanded and Otelo, its commander, placed under house arrest. Eanes was named army chief of staff and made a member of the Revolutionary Council. The “constitutional pact” was renegotiated in February 1976. Elections were held for the new Assembly of the Republic in April, and Eanes was elected president in June with 61.5 percent of the vote in the first round. The Constituent Assembly sought to avoid both the weak, unstable governments of the 1911 constitution and also the authoritarianism of the 1933 constitution. Based on the French model, the new system called for both an elected president with real powers and an executive prime minister chosen by a majority party or coalition in a freely elected parliament. The renegotiated constitutional pact still called for socialism as the goal of government and society and institutionalized the legacy of the revolution. Moreover, it retained the Revolutionary Council, still a self-appointed and purely military institution, and gave it the power to safeguard the legacy of the revolution and judge the constitutionality of legislation passed by the civilian government. The first elected government was led by Mário Soares of the moderately leftist Socialist Party. In 1979 however, a center-right government of Social Democrats and Christian Democrats was elected. The inherent tension between the elected government and the essentially
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undemocratic council became evident as the cabinet sought to privatize portions of the economy. After a standoff that lasted roughly from 1979 to 1982, a process of normalization set in and the undemocratic vestiges of the revolution were gradually excised. In particular, a constitutional reform in 1982 abolished the Revolutionary Council and sent the army back to the barracks. In the elections of 1986 Soares became Portugal’s first civilian president in 60 years, replacing Eanes. Another constitutional reform, in 1989, eliminated the requirement to keep the nationalized sector of the economy. The moderate Socialist and Social Democratic parties had increasingly come to dominate the political system, reducing the need for multiparty coalitions and increasing the stability of government. Portugal had become a far less hierarchical and far more pluralistic, democratic, and dynamic society than it had been before 1974. In 1986 the European Economic Community (now the European Union) accepted Portugal and Spain simultaneously as members. The opening to trade, the inflow of European investments for infrastructure and other purposes, and the constitutional changes of 1989 spurred growth and helped transform the economy. Economic growth surpassed the European average in the 1990s and until 2002. While, like any country, Portugal was not without its scandals, controversies, and disagreements, by the end of the century it had become integrated as a solidly democratic, stable, and respected member of the European community. See also North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Further reading: Anderson, James M. The History of Portugal. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000; Maxwell, Kenneth. The Making of Portuguese Democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995; Pinto, António Costa, ed. Modern Portugal. Palo Alto, CA: Society for the Promotion of Science and Scholarship, 1998; Saraiva, José Hermano. Portugal: A Companion History. Manchester, UK: Carcanet Press, 1997; Solsten, Eric, ed. Portugal: A Country Study, 2d ed. Washington, DC: Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, 1994. Scott C. Monje
Prague Spring Czechoslovakia became fully communist in February 1948 and was a member of both the Warsaw Pact and
the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON, the Soviet counterpart to the Marshall Plan). As such, it had very close ties to the Soviet Union, politically as well as economically. During the 1960s, following the ascension of Nikita Khrushchev to the position of premier, the Soviet Union’s relations with its satellite nations in eastern Europe softened, leading to greater flexibility in their political and economic policies. One of the greatest tests of how far this new flexibility would stretch was initiated by Alexander Dubˇcek, the political head of Czechoslovakia. Another factor influencing these events was the spread of student movements across the continent of Europe, particularly in West Germany, Italy, and France. In 1967 these student movements spilled over into Czechoslovakia and dovetailed with increasing intellectual dissent among some of the Communist Party membership. Internally there were deep-rooted fissures in the unity of the state. The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was fragmented, stemming from the political trials of the 1950s, which revolved around questioning party comrades’ commitment to Stalinism. As the party discussed economic changes, two unforeseen developments occurred. Some among the party began to call for relaxed censorship, and Slovak nationalists began to demand a greater share of political power. These events led to the resignation of president and first secretary of the Party Antoni´n Novotný. Later in March Ludwig Svoboda assumed the post of president, due to legislation that mandated that these two positions be separated, as Novotný’s criticism of early reforms foundered. Dubcˇek then implemented a series of radical reforms collectively known as the Action Program. These reforms allowed freedom of expression rather than strict censorship; promoted open, public discussion of important national issues; democratized the KSC; provided amnesty for all political prisoners for the first time in 20 years; encouraged greater economic freedom; allowed noncommunists to assume high-ranking government positions; and opened investigations into the political trials of the 1950s. These reforms became known as the Prague Spring, harkening back to the 1956 attempts of Hungarian Imre Nagy to redefine the role of the Communist Party within the state. The reforms were officially approved by the government on April 5, 1968; however, a rift between liberal communists, who supported Dubˇcek, and hard-line communists, who supported Moscow’s policy, became more clearly defined. Czechoslovak intellectuals responded by calling for long-term commitment, through the publication of a manifesto, which became known as the “Two Thousand
Words.” The Soviet reaction to this manifesto was swift and critical, which pushed Dubcˇek’s government to officially condemn its ideas in order to preserve its delicate relations with the Soviet Union. Czechoslovakia’s Warsaw Pact neighbors saw this blossoming of freedoms, particularly the “Two Thousand Words,” as a potential danger that threatened to spill over the border and raise public protest within their own nations. However, initially through a series of meetings, it seemed as if the Warsaw Pact nations would allow these experiments to continue. In late July and early August of 1968, at the border village of Cierna nad Tisou, the political leadership of Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union met to discuss these developments. This meeting was followed by an additional conference, adding delegates from Bulgaria, East Germany, Hungary, and Poland, which convened at Bratislava on August 3. These meetings ended with promises of renewed friendship and commitment to socialism; yet Warsaw Pact troops began to mass along the border with Czechoslovakia. Suddenly, during the night of August 20–21, 1968, the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact nations sent 500,000 troops across the border, while Soviet aircraft landed special forces directly in the capital city of Prague, seizing control of key transportation junctures and communication networks. The native population responded with defiance, seen in public protests and demonstrations, and more than 80,000 political refugees streamed into the West, seeking asylum. The Soviets suffered minor military losses of 96 killed and 87 wounded; only 11 of those killed died due to direct confrontation with Czechoslovak citizens. By mid-September, Warsaw Pact troops had killed more than 80 Czechoslovakian citizens, seriously wounded another 266, and lightly wounded an additional 436. The Soviet Union was unable to establish an alternative government, and initially kept Alexander Dubcˇek in his post. Dubcˇek gave in to Soviet demands and repealed his progressive policies. In April 1969 the Soviets installed Gustav Husák as Dubcˇek’s replacement, and Husák then carried out “normalization” efforts and presided over a purge of the KSC. Prague Spring marked the end to the flexibility of Khrushchev, but it also stood as a harbinger of Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost and perestroika of the 1980s. Under the leadership of Leonid Brezhnev this autonomy would cease to exist, a trend that lasted until the time of Gorbachev and the early rumblings of the revolutions of 1989. Brezhnev made this policy shift clear; essentially the “Brezhnev Doctrine” meant that although the Soviet Union would not normally interfere in the affairs of its satellite states, if the system of social-
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ism itself was under direct threat the Soviet Union would help any communist regime maintain power against the threat of overthrow. Further reading: Dawisha, Karen. The Kremlin and the Prague Spring. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984; Szulc, Tad. Czechoslovakia Since World War II. New York: Viking Press, 1971; Williams, Kieren. The Prague Spring and Its Aftermath: Czechoslovak Politics, 1968–1970. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Laura J. Hilton
presidential impeachment, U.S. The framers of the U.S. Constitution sought to check presidential power by creating a process for Congress to remove the president for reasons of “treason, bribery, or high crimes and misdemeanors.” No president has ever been removed from office in this fashion, but two presidents in the second half of the 20th century were subject to impeachment inquiries based on congressional definitions of “high crimes and misdemeanors”: Richard Nixon, a Republican, and Bill Clinton, a Democrat. The process for impeaching the president is spelled out in the Constitution, but has seen an added step produced by the committee system in Congress. The House Judiciary Committee originates the indictment against the president, producing one or more articles of impeachment to define the president’s “high crimes and misdemeanors.” The articles are then subject to a vote by the full House of Representatives and require a majority approval to impeach the president. The Senate then tries the president, with the chief justice of the Supreme Court presiding. At the end of the trial the Senate votes; a twothirds majority is needed to remove the president. The attempt to impeach Richard Nixon centered on the illegal activities committed by members of his administration and the attempted cover-up in which he participated. During the first term of his presidency, Nixon engaged in questionably legal activities such as the authorization of the FBI to tap the phones of administration officials and reporters to prevent leaks, and the authorization of the creation of an in-house investigative group, the Plumbers, to prevent leaks and embarrass “enemies” such as Daniel Ellsberg and Senator Edward Kennedy. This willingness to circumvent the law led directly to attempts by the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP) to undermine potential
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Democratic candidates and to seek information from the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate office complex. When men who were employed by CREEP staffers G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt were apprehended in the Watergate on June 17, 1972, Nixon and his top aides responded by attempting to cover up the president’s involvement in the affair. A bipartisan majority of the House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment against President Nixon, centering on the abuse of power, obstruction of justice, and defiance of a congressional subpoena to turn over the tapes of recorded conversations. To avoid certain removal Nixon resigned from office on August 9, 1974. At least in part, the attempt to impeach Bill Clinton appeared to grow out of a desire for revenge over the Nixon impeachment attempt. The Clinton administration was subject to several investigations by independent counsels and, after 1994, by the Republican-controlled Congress, both about the behavior of administration officials during his presidency and questions about the financial dealings of the president and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Although Congress and independent counsel Kenneth Starr failed to uncover criminal activity by the president or his wife, they did determine that President Clinton had lied about conducting an extramarital affair with a White House intern. The House Judiciary brought two articles of impeachment against the president on December 19, 1998, centering on lying to Congress and obstruction of justice. The full House voted to impeach the president on both articles on a near–party line vote. After trial by the Senate President Clinton was acquitted of both articles of impeachment on February 12, 1999. President Clinton served out his term in office. Since in both cases of impeachment the president’s party did not control Congress, the process of impeachment has been tarred by the charge that partisanship, rather than presidential malfeasance, has been the primary motive for action. This charge had more resonance in the impeachment of President Clinton than in that of President Nixon because of the criminal acts committed by Nixon and his associates. Nevertheless, the process of impeachment remains a potential check on presidential power. Further reading: Emery, Fred. Watergate: The Corruption of American Politics and the Fall of Richard Nixon. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994; Olson, Keith. Watergate: The Scandal that Shook America. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2003; Rae, Nicol, and Colton Campbell. Impeaching
Clinton: Partisan Strife on Capitol Hill. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004. Richard M. Filipink, Jr.
Putin, Vladimir
(1952– ) Russian president Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was born in Leningrad on October 7, 1952, and was very much a product of the Soviet system. His family background was ordinary and reflected the hardships of postwar Soviet life. Putin applied himself to improving his position in the Soviet order and looked, once he graduated in law from Leningrad State University, to a career in the security services (KGB) as the best method of doing so. Following initial duties dealing with Leningrad dissidents, Putin took up from 1985 to 1989 a KGB posting in East Germany. After the collapse of the East German regime, Putin moved to the international affairs section of his old university and within a short time joined the Leningrad politician Anatoly Sobchak as an aide; following Sobchak’s election in 1991 as mayor, Putin became deputy mayor. His abilities were noticed in Moscow, and he joined the Kremlin staff in 1996 as an assistant to Pavel Borodin overseeing Russian economic assets. This post soon brought him to the attention of President Boris Yeltsin, who, in 1998, appointed Putin head of the Federal Security Service (the replacement for the KGB), from which post Putin quickly rose to be head of the Security Council in 1999. These times were unstable ones for Yeltsin and the Russian Federation. Within a period of 18 months several prime ministers came and went. When Yeltsin fired Sergei Stepashin in August 1999, he appointed Putin prime minister. He was now in position for succession to the presidency, which unexpectedly came his way when Yeltsin resigned on December 31, 1999, and Putin became acting president. A presidential election followed in March 2000, and Putin won convincingly. The backing of the security services and many economic reformers gave him a political base to overcome any threats from the nationalist Fatherland Front. In his first years in office, Putin faced a number of crises stemming from the unrest and malaise of the Yeltsin years. Chechnya, controlled by Islamic militants, was clearly the most significant. He attempted to resolve the war, but terrorist bombings in Moscow brought a swift and punishing military retaliation.
Vladimir Putin was elected president of Russia in March 2000, after the turbulent years of the Boris Yeltsin administration.
In addition, he wanted to reverse some of the decentralizing traits of the Yeltsin years, and this meant imposing more Moscow control over the outlying regions through a system of appointed governors. He moved against the oligarchs who had profited during the Yeltsin years. The crisis following the sinking of the submarine Kursk in August 2000 hurt Putin’s reputation when the government appeared incapable of reacting to the disaster. In terms of policy, Putin wanted to restore something of the order and pride that had existed during the Soviet era. This meant that some old symbols of state were preserved along with the belief in centralizing control over both the economy and the media. Following Putin’s Unity Party landslide victory in the 2003 parliamentary election, it was suggested that control of the state media produced the favorable results. On March 14, 2004, Putin won decisively his second term in office. He continued his campaign to strengthen state powers. There were also improvements in the justice system and reform of the difficult tax laws that inhibited investment and development. Some see recent actions as a reflection of the antidemocratic instincts that lurk behind the scenes in Putin’s adminis-
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tration. Putin’s 2004 support of Viktor Yanukovych in the Ukrainian election was viewed by critics as an exercise in undue influence on the affairs of a neighboring independent state. In foreign affairs, Putin built positive relationships with much of the West, including the president of the United States, although he opposed the Second Gulf War. However, after the events of September 11, 2001, he was generally supportive of U.S. action in the War on Terror, including the use of bases in former Soviet Central Asian territories. His country’s own campaign against Islamic terror made him a willing ally. His provision of nuclear technology and advanced weapons to Iran raised doubts as to his sincerity. He also reluctantly accepted the U.S. abrogation of the ABM treaty as part of America’s missile defense program. Putin cooperated with the enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which now includes former Baltic Soviet Republics bordering Russia. Relations with Europe were strengthened by an agreement in 2005 with Germany to construct a major oil pipeline that should bring economic benefits to both Russia and Germany. Putin also attempted to build favorable relationships—economic and political—with his Asian neighbors, China and Japan. It is too early to determine Putin’s legacy but he maintained his popularity with campaigns against corruption and the oligarchs. Economic improvements and stability were welcomed by a public often left in turmoil following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Although not an open democracy on Western terms, and with features that suggest the possibility of returning to old ways, Russia remains a world force and one that has the unrealized potential for full democratic development. Further reading: Cameron, Ross. Russian Politics under Putin. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004; Putin, Vladimir. First Person. London: Hutchinson, 2000; Sakwa, Richard. Putin: Russia’s Choice. Oxford: Taylor and Francis, 2004; Shevtsova, Lilia. Putin’s Russia. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for Peace, 2003. Theodore W. Eversole
Q Qaddafi, Muammar (1942– ) Libyan leader
Muammar Qaddafi was born in the desert region of Sidra (Sirte), Libya, in 1942. He was the youngest child from a nomadic Bedouin family. Qaddafi attended the Sebha preparatory school in Fezzan, where he formed a secret society, the Free Officers, patterned on gamal abdel nasser’s group in Egypt that championed the causes of pan-Arabism and Arab socialism. In 1961 Qaddafi was expelled from Sebha because of his political activism. In April 1963 Qaddafi became a trainee officer at the military academy in Benghazi and began to work his way up through the army officer corps. In 1966 he volunteered to go and study with the Royal Corps of Signals in Britain, where he learned radio electronics and telecommunications. He was able to develop a code that the secret Free Officers group used to maintain contact with one another throughout libya. Qaddafi and his close friends from Sebha became the core of the revolutionary group that overthrew King Idris and removed Italian influence from Libya. Qaddafi called off the projected coup against the king twice before going ahead with it on September 1, 1969. While Idris was out of the country, the Free Officers arrested the king’s leading supporters in a bloodless coup. The first objective was to take control of the main barracks and the radio station. After securing the radio station, Qaddafi gave an impromptu speech announcing that the monarchy had ended and that Libya had been given back to the people. Qaddafi was appointed
president of the Revolutionary Command Council, the main governing body of the country. The Free Officers promptly refused to renew agreements with Britain and the United States for their military bases in Libya; they also emphasized Arab unity. They nationalized most banks and other business and declared Islam the religion of the state while stating that religious freedom would be accorded to all other faiths. In the midst of the cold war, the Western nations,—particularly the United States—were hostile to these changes and Qaddafi’s fiery brand of Arab nationalism. In hopes of creating a pan-Arab state, Qaddafi proclaimed the Federation of Arab Republics (Libya, Egypt, and Syria) in 1972, but the three countries could not agree on specific terms. In 1973 Qaddafi talked for the first time about his third universal theory, an economic and political philosophy that was neither capitalist nor communist. At this time he also nationalized all foreign petroleum assets. Increased revenues from petroleum during the 1970s enabled Qaddafi to initiate massive programs of domestic development and to build a modern infrastructure. At the same time, Libyan forces occupied the 60-mile-wide Aouzou Strip on the border of Chad. The skirmishes between Libya and Chad continued sporadically for years to come. Qaddafi gave massive amounts of financial aid to African nations and was a prominent figure in the Organization of African Unity. In 1974 Qaddafi gave up all his political and administrative functions, but still remained head of state and commander in chief of the armed forces. On March 2, 351
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1974, Qaddafi proclaimed that Libya was to be known as the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahariya. He subsequently stepped down from all public offices but remained the real ruler of Libya from behind the scenes. In 1975, Qaddafi published the first of three documents called The Green Book, which expounded his personal philosophy and political belief translated into a program of action. The Green Book became part of every Libyan’s life and was studied in schools; extracts were broadcast daily, and its slogans were publicized throughout the nation. Part one of the book, The Solution of the Problem of Democracy—The Authority of the People, concentrated on the political structure of Libya and rejected the concept of parliamentary democracy. Part two, published in 1977 and entitled The Solution of the Economic Problem—Socialism, discussed the weaknesses of both communism and capitalism. Part three, published in 1981 and entitled The Social Basis of the Third Universal Theory, dealt with a wide range of issues including nationalism and the status of minorities and women. Qaddafi’s hostility toward Israel and the West brought him closer to the Soviet Union. Western governments also blamed him for a series of terrorist attacks against civilian targets. In 1981 U.S. and Libyan air forces clashed over the Gulf of Sidra. Hoping to stop terrorist attacks, President ronald reagan authorized a bombing raid to assassinate Qaddafi in 1986. Although his adopted daughter died in the attack, Qaddafi survived this and other attempts on his life. During the 1990s, Qaddafi began to adopt a more moderate approach to the West and provided financial compensation for some terrorist victims in order to repair diplomatic relations. Although domestic opposition to his regime continued to mount, he remained in power and seemingly began to groom his son as his successor. Further reading: Cooley, John. Libyan Sandstorm. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982; Tremlett, George. Gaddafi: The Desert Mystic. New York: Carroll and Graf, 1993. Brian M. Eichstadt
al-Qaeda Al-Qaeda (Arabic for “the base”) is a worldwide Sunni Islamist militant insurgent group. Founded by Osama bin Laden in 1988 in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda is now dedicated to driving the United States out of the Middle
This propaganda poster featuring al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was found by U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
East specifically and out of Muslim countries generally, to destroying Israel, and to toppling pro-Western governments in Islamic countries and replacing them with Islamic fundamentalist governments. These three goals lead to the organization’s ultimate goal, which is the reestablishment of the caliphate, a nation uniting Muslims and spanning the Islamic world. The organization is believed to be highly redundant, both financially and operationally. While the various cells that make up the organization are accountable to higher-level leadership, operations appear to be left to the individual cells, while higher levels provide material and logistical support. Ideas and targets coming from the upper echelons filter down to the individual cells responsible for coordinating and executing the attacks. This redundancy increases the organization’s resiliency; when cells are destroyed or captured, the losses can be contained more effectively than if al-Qaeda were a more linear organization.
Al-Qaeda’s training camps are likewise well organized. The extent of the training and organization is best seen in the group’s multivolume Encyclopedia of Jihad. Several thousand pages in length, the encyclopedia details the bureaucratic workings of the group. Covered topics include guerrilla warfare, assembling booby traps, tactics for fighting against armored or aerial combat units, urban warfare, intelligence security, data gathering, and chemical weapons tactics. The group has been linked to or accused of taking part in terrorist acts across the globe beginning in the early 1990s. A list of the attacks against U.S. interests attributed to al-Qaeda includes the 1992 hotel bombings in Aden, Yemen; the February 6, 1993, bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City; attacks carried out on U.S. military forces in Somalia in 1993 and 1994; the June 25, 1996, truck bombing of the Khobar Towers residential compound in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia; the near-simultaneous bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on August 7, 1998; the suicide bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen on October 12, 2000; and the September 11, 2001, airline hijackings and attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. The United States is not the group’s only target, however. Al-Qaeda also is linked to the April 2002 bombing of the El Ghriba synagogue in Tunisia; the October 2002 nightclub bombing in Bali, Indonesia; the November 2003 bombings of synagogues and a British bank in Istanbul, Turkey; the March 11, 2004, train bombings in Madrid, Spain; and the July 7, 2005, London transit bombings. Al-Qaeda is most often represented and understood in regard to its founder, Osama bin Laden (aka Abu Abdallah). Bin Laden was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on March 10, 1957. When he was six months old, his father, Muhammad bin Laden, the Yemeni immigrant who established the Saudi Binladin Group, relocated to Jeddah, where Osama grew up. The Soviet Union’s December 1979 invasion of Afghanistan galvanized the Muslim world in defense of Afghanistan and provided the West with a proxy war through which to combat the Soviet Union. Bin Laden, who had studied economics at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, was one of many spurred to action in defense of Afghanistan. He made his first trip to neighboring Pakistan in 1980, where he sought ways to contribute to the jihad. Bin Laden made several monetary contributions to the mujahideen, but quickly began looking for other ways to contribute. Bin Laden joined with Palestinian cleric Abdullah Azzam to found the Services Bureau (Makhtab al-
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Khidimat, or MAK) in Pakistan in 1984. Azzam, who had taught at King Abdul Aziz University while bin Laden studied there, was indispensable in recruiting. In addition to providing relief to war victims in Afghanistan, the MAK organized and coordinated the volunteers, donations, and weapons coming into Pakistan and Afghanistan in support of the jihad. Azzam believed that the young Arab men streaming to Pakistan to participate in the jihad should be scattered among the Afghan functions. Azzam felt that such a mixing of Arabs among the local forces would reap benefits both in Afghanistan and abroad. Bin Laden saw the situation differently and sought to create his own separate Arab fighting force. He believed that such a force would be a superior fighting unit compared to local Afghan forces. Bin Laden broke with Azzam and established training camps for his Arab force near Jaji, in eastern Afghanistan. From this base, which they dubbed al-Masadah (the Lion’s Den), bin Laden’s “Arab Afghans” engaged the Soviets in the battle of Jaji in the spring of 1987. It was at this time that bin Laden grew closer to the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) and one of its most prominent members, Ayman al Zawahiri, who would become bin Laden’s deputy in al-Qaeda. When the Soviets announced their planned withdrawal in April 1988, bin Laden began preparations to perpetuate and expand his forces. He began by moving his unit to the area around Jalalabad, Afghanistan, which became known as al-Qaeda; bin Laden would later say that the name remained with the group by accident. Following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, bin Laden, who had consistently expressed his contempt for the “atheist” Hussein and his Ba’athist government, approached the Saudi king with a plan to use his Arab Afghans to drive Hussein’s forces from Kuwait. The Saudi government sought to restrict his movements within the kingdom. Bin Laden obtained permission in early 1991 to travel to Pakistan on the pretext of checking in on some business interests and never returned to Saudi Arabia. In early 1992 bin Laden and al-Qaeda moved to Sudan, where they remained until 1996. Al-Qaeda and the National Islamic Front (NIF), the ruling party in Sudan, enjoyed a symbiotic relationship. The NIF granted al-Qaeda a safe haven and freedom of movement, while bin Laden made substantial investments in Sudanese industry and agriculture and undertook several large-scale construction projects to develop the infrastructure and agricultural and industrial production capacity of Sudan.
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While in the Sudan, bin Laden directed his forces in actions against the communist government of South Yemen. The Arab Afghans also were sent to Bosnia, where they had a substantial impact on that conflict. Bin Laden dispatched al-Qaeda forces into Somalia in response to the buildup of U.S. forces. In December 1992 President george h. w. bush sent 28,000 U.S. troops into Somalia on a humanitarian mission in support of United Nations (UN) relief efforts. Bin Laden and al-Qaeda dismissed all humanitarian claims and interpreted the U.S. presence as a way of putting pressure on Islamic regimes and as an effort to establish another base from which to attack Muslim nations. Al-Qaeda regarded Yemen as a major victory. First, even though the hotels bombed in Yemen did not house U.S. personnel, the transfer of U.S. troops out of Yemen shortly after the hotel bombings indicated to al-Qaeda that they had been successful in driving the Americans from Yemen. Bin Laden also claimed that the militarily superior U.S. forces were driven from Somalia by a poor, ill-armed people whose only strength was their faith. In his 1996 fatwa declaring war against the United States, bin Laden claimed that the most important lesson to be learned from Somalia was that the United States would flee at the first sign of resistance. The year 1994 was a watershed for bin Laden. He survived two assassination attempts and in April was stripped of his Saudi citizenship in response to the growing threat he represented to the regime. A final step in his radicalization came in August, when the Saudi government imprisoned clerics Salman al Awdah and Safar al Hawali, who were among the first and most prominent of the clerics circulating cassettes of their sermons against the continued U.S. presence in the Arabian Peninsula, and whose imprisonment bin Laden would later mention in his 1996 fatwa. Bin Laden and al-Qaeda left Sudan in 1996 and returned to Afghanistan, a move prompted by several factors. In addition to the assassination attempts, bin Laden faced international pressure on the NIF and its de facto leader, hassan al-turabi. The United States and Saudi Arabia sought to have bin Laden silenced and his activities curtailed, and al-Turabi found it increasingly difficult to maneuver and protect bin Laden. When Sudan started pressuring bin Laden, he returned to Jalalabad. There bin Laden and al-Qaeda entered into a symbiotic relationship with the Taliban (“the students”), who were in the process of consolidating their control over much of the country. This relationship was similar to that
with the NIF in Sudan; bin Laden and his organization gained considerable freedom of movement and protection, while his benefactors benefited from agricultural, infrastructural, and industrial investment and development. It was during the period between bin Laden’s return to Afghanistan and the 1998 fatwa that civilians became targets. Both the 1996 fatwa and bin Laden’s 1997 CNN interview spoke of civilians as collateral damage, not as legitimate targets in and of themselves. By 1998 this had changed, and the fatwa issued February 22, 1998, explicitly stated that Americans and their allies, civilians and military alike, were now al-Qaeda targets anywhere they could be found. Communications from al-Qaeda repeatedly stress their belief that Western governments oppress Muslims and Muslim nations and are engaged in a war against Islam. Bin Laden describes the presence of U.S. forces in “the Land of the Two Holy Places” (Saudi Arabia) as the greatest insult and threat faced by the Islamic world since Muhammad’s lifetime. In addition to decrying U.S. support for Israel, the group condemns U.S. support for what it considers “apostate regimes,” particularly Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden also points to the sanctions imposed on Iraq following the Gulf War as one reason to reject any human rights arguments coming from the West. Al-Qaeda’s idea of the ummah (community of believers; the Islamic world) in opposition to the world derives from the teachings of two prominent Islamic scholars. Ibn Taymiyyah (1263–1328) was a 14th-century Islamic scholar who taught that jihad is the duty of each individual Muslim when Islam is attacked, that the Qu’ran should be interpreted literally, and that all Muslims should read the Qu’ran and Hadith (the sayings of the Prophet) for themselves and not rely on a learned clergy. A second influence on al-Qaeda was sayyid qutb (1906–66), an Islamist associated with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Describing the world as existing between states of belief (Islam) and unbelief (jahiliyya), Qutb condemned Western and Christian civilization. Urging jihad against all enemies of Islam, Qutb believed that there is no middle ground and that all Muslims must take to jihad when Islam is threatened. These influences are apparent in al-Qaeda’s activities and rhetoric. Bin Laden believes that since the Christians, Jews, and Hindus have nuclear weapons, it is only fitting that Muslims obtain them as well. Bin Laden also echoes Ibn Taymiyyah in his assertions that the Saudi government is aiding the “crusaders” in plundering the wealth of the ummah, the vast Middle
Quebec sovereignty movement
astern oil reserves, and by acting to keep oil prices E below fair-market value. Al-Qaeda’s leadership cadre is well educated. Bin Laden has a university degree in economics, and his inner circle contains doctors; agricultural, civil, and electrical engineers; and computer scientists, but no religious scholars. Rahman’s fatwa echoed the call to attack the United States and its allies—civilian and military, anywhere in the world—and contained exhortations to sink ships, shoot down airplanes, and burn corporations and businesses. Two separate attacks on U.S. warships were made in subsequent years, with the USS Cole attack following an unsuccessful attack on the USS The Sullivans one year earlier. On September 11, 2001, the plot masterminded by Ramzi Binalshibh and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who were arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and 2003, respectively, proceeded along the lines of Rahman’s fatwa.
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A patriotic motorist displays the flag of Quebec, known as the Fleurdelisé, which resembles an ancient French military banner.
See also islamist movements; terrorism. Further reading: Bergen, Peter. The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of Al-Qaeda’s Leader. New York: Free Press, 2006; Bin Laden, Osama, et al. “Text of Fatwa Urging Jihad against Americans.” Institute for Counter-Terrorism. www. ict.org.il/articles/fatwah.htm (cited February 2006); “CNN March 1997 Interview with Osama bin Laden.” FindLaw.com. files.findlaw.com/news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/binladen/ binladenintvw-cnn.pdf (cited February 2006); Scheuer, Michael. Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America. Washington, DC: Brassey’s, Inc., 2002. “Transcript of Bin Laden’s October Interview.” Cable News Network LP. LLLP. www.cnn. com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/south/02/05/binladen.transcript (cited February 2006).
Anthony Santoro
Quebec sovereignty movement Canadian history has been plagued by issues of national identity since 1763, when Britain conquered New France in the French and Indian War. Britain’s Québec Act of 1774 recognized the rights of French-speaking Roman Catholics. The British North America Act of 1867, the basis for Canada’s constitution, is premised on a doctrine of “two founding nations” in which the English-speaking and French-speaking cultures are recognized as equal partners. Because the two national identities exist in a country that has traditionally
favored Anglophones, Quebec (Québec), the heart of Francophone Canada, and its leaders have tried to assert their nationalism as a distinct cultural community within Canada. The modern sovereignty movement is a product of the 1960s. It is a demand for political independence for Quebec combined with economic association with the rest of Canada. It was introduced by René Lévesque, a former Liberal cabinet minister and popular broadcast journalist who organized the Parti Québécois (PQ) in 1968. PQ gained support when the 1969 Official Languages Act seemed to trivialize Quebec’s demand for special status. In the October Crisis of 1970, a radical fringe group called the Front de Libération du Québec kidnapped James Cross, the British trade commissioner in Montreal, and Pierre Laporte, Quebec’s minister of labor and immigration. Quebec soon asked the Canadian armed forces to intervene, and the next day the federal government banned the FLQ under the War Measures Act. Laporte’s body was found October 17, and a group holding Cross released him in return for safe passage to Cuba in early December. A federal inquiry later ruled that the suspension of normal civil liberties had been illegal. In 1976, the PQ gained control of Quebec’s government and promised to consult the people of Quebec before taking any steps toward independence and secession. Four years later, majority-French provincial voters soundly rejected a referendum to authorize sovereignty negotiations with Ottawa. Even so, the PQ was reelected in 1981, and in 1982 it refused to accept
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the new Canadian constitution. When the PQ removed sovereignty-association from its party platform in 1985, the Liberal Party regained control of the Quebec assembly. Reorganized under the leadership of former finance minister Jacques Parizeau, the PQ again promised to declare Quebec independent after the voters of Quebec voted oui in a referendum. The Meech Lake Accord, which agreed to conditions that Quebec had placed on its acceptance of the national constitution, collapsed in 1990 due to opposition. A subsequent package of constitutional reforms, presented to voters in a 1992 national referendum, was also defeated. By 1994 the Bloc Québécois, a national party devoted to Quebec sovereignty, had won enough votes to become the official opposition party in Ottawa. Another sovereignty referendum in 1995 lost narrowly. Canada was startled in November 2006 when Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper proposed a resolution, passed overwhelmingly by Parliament, stating that the 7 million “Québécois form a nation within a united Canada.” Although this recognition was called “symbolic,” it was unclear whether it might spark a renewed push for Quebec’s independence. See also trudeau, pierre. Further reading: Laforest, Guy. Trudeau and the End of a Canadian Dream. Translated by Paul Leduc-Brown and Michelle Weinroth. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, [1992] 1995; McRoberts, Kenneth. Misconceiving Canada: The Struggle for National Unity. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1997; Taucar, Christopher Edward. Canadian Federalism and Québec Sovereignty. New York: P. Lang, 2000. David Miller Parker
Qutb, Sayyid
(1906–1966) Egyptian Islamist theoretician Sayyid Qutb was born in an Egyptian village in 1906. Although the family was poor, Qutb’s father was educated and was an early supporter of the Egyptian nationalist movement. As a boy Qutb attended the local religious school (kuttab), where he reputedly had memorized the Qu’ran before his teenage years. He attended a teacher’s college in Cairo and in 1933 earned a degree from Dar al-Ulam, the prestigious secular Egyptian university established in the late 19th century. After graduation Qutb worked for the Ministry of Education. A
prolific writer, Qutb wrote fiction, poetry, and news articles during the 1930s. Qutb studied for a master’s degree in education in the United States on a scholarship from 1948 to 1950. Qutb’s enmity toward the West seems to date from his stay in the United States, where he was infuriated by the racism, materialism, and casual social exchanges between the sexes that he observed there. After traveling through Europe, he returned to Egypt and resigned from the Ministry of Education. In 1953 he joined the Muslim Brotherhood and was appointed director of the brotherhood’s propaganda section. In the early 1950s Qutb may have been the brotherhood’s go-between with gamal abdel nasser’s Free Officers Group; he initially supported the 1952 revolution and the overthrow of the corrupt monarchy of King Farouk. But after Nasser refused to institute an Islamic state, the brotherhood opposed him. After a failed assassination attempt on Nasser in 1954, members of the brotherhood were persecuted, and Qutb was imprisoned and tortured. He observed other brotherhood members being tortured and killed and concluded that violence was justifiable to overthrow Muslim leaders and regimes that were unjust and did not adhere to the sharia and Islamic precepts. While in prison Qutb wrote a commentary on the Qu’ran and an Islamic manifesto, Ma’alim fi al-Tariq (Milestones). He became more radical as the repression of the brotherhood intensified. Qutb condemned Western civilization as primitive and materialistic and argued that Muslim leaders who adopted or cooperated with the West were in conflict with Islamic culture and tradition. He warned of jahiliyyah (ignorance), which he believed was imposed by the adoption of Western culture. He rejected the ideologies of Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, and Karl Marx, asserting that Marxism resulted in the enslavement of mankind. Qutb held an ultraconservative view of the role of women in society. He argued that although the Qu’ran mandated the equality of all humans the role of women was to maintain family values, with men as the head of households. For Qutb the Qu’ranic text, and to a lesser degree the Hadith, were the sources of all law; be believed that the Qu’ran provided a comprehensive guideline for the conduct of all aspects of human life. Authority emanated from God and the Qu’ran; therefore jihad, or holy war against the modernization of the West and against unjust, corrupt Muslim rulers was the duty of true believers. He advocated the creation of committed cadres of devout
believers to teach Muslim youth and to struggle against “ignorant” or unjust regimes in the Islamic world as well as against the West. Qutb was released from prison in 1964, but shortly thereafter was imprisoned again on charges of sedition and terrorism. Although in Milestones he had fallen just short of advocating the overthrow of Nasser’s regime, he was found guilty after a public trial. Qutb was executed in 1966 and promptly became a martyr for members of the brotherhood and a myriad of breakaway Islamist organizations. For Qutb a theocracy was an ideal, and he envisioned the creation of a new society and government. He was a major force in 20th century islamist movements. His books were translated into many languages and influenced a wide variety of contemporary Islamist
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movements in Tunisia, Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran. Qutb’s brother taught in Saudi Arabia, where he also influenced future Islamist radicals. The Egyptian Ayman Zawahiri followed Qutb’s precepts and in turn became a theoretical mentor to osama bin laden. Qutb’s works have also remained a major force for the Muslim Brotherhood, an important factor in Egyptian politics until the present day. See also al-qaeda. Further reading: Khatab, Sayed. The Political Thought of Sayyid Qutb. London: Routledge, 2006; Qutb, Sayyid. Social Justice in Islam. North Haledon, NJ: Islamic Publications International, 2000. Janice J. Terry
R Rabin, Yitzhak
(1922–1995) Israeli general and prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was a key Israeli military and political leader. Born in Jerusalem in 1922, Rabin earned a degree from an agricultural college and joined the elite Palmach forces that fought in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. He became chief of staff and led the army during the stunning Israeli victory in the 1967 war. Rabin was the Israeli ambassador to the United States from 1968 to 1973. After returning to Israel, he ran for the Knesset on the Labor Party ticket. He vied with his rival Shimon Peres for the position of prime minister after Golda Meir’s government fell and defeated Peres for the leadership position. Rabin served as prime minister from 1974 to 1977 and was instrumental in rebuilding the army after the 1973 war (Yom Kippur War). He also signed the initial disengagement agreement with Egypt over the Sinai Peninsula. Following reports of his wife having had, under Israeli law, an illegal bank account in the United States, Rabin stepped down as prime minister. For much of his military career, Rabin was a hardliner with regard to the Palestinians and Arab nations. He advocated the use of strong force to crush the Palestinian Intifada when it erupted in the Occupied Territories (the Gaza Strip and the West Bank) in 1987. Rabin was again elected prime minister in 1992. Following protracted secret negotiations, he agreed to the 1993 Oslo accords and signed a much-publicized agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), represented by Yasir Arafat, in a ceremony hosted by then president Bill
Clinton on the White House lawn. Under the agreement the Israelis agreed to a gradual pullout from selected portions of the West Bank and Gaza in exchange for full recognition by the PLO. The agreement was opposed by both Israeli and Palestinian extremists and hard-liners. In 1994 Rabin signed a peace treaty with King Hussein of Jordan, with whom—in contrast to Arafat—he had cordial relations. Rabin was awarded the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize along with Peres and Arafat. Rabin was assassinated by Yigal Amir, an Israeli fanatic who opposed the settlement with the Palestinians, in 1995. The assassination shocked Israeli society but it also reflected the deep divisions within Israel over the exchange of peace for land. See also Arab-Israeli War (1967); Arab-IsraeliPalestinian peace negotiations. Further reading: Rabin, Yitzhak. The Rabin Memoirs, Expanded Edition with Recent Speeches, New Photographs and an Afterword. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996; Slater, Robert. Rabin of Israel. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977, 1993. Janice J. Terry
Rahman, Sheikh Mujibur (1920–1975) Bangladeshi leader
The founding father of Bangladesh, Banga Bandhu (Friend of Banga) Sheikh Mujibur Rahaman, was born 359
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on March 17, 1920, in Tungipara village in the Faridpur district in erstwhile East Pakistan. He was the third child of Sheikh Luthfur Rahman and Sheikh Sahara Khatun. After the partition of India in 1947, Mujibur built his career in East Pakistan as an active politician championing the cause of Bengalis. Although religion was the common factor in East and West Pakistan, there were economic, social, and linguistic differences. East Pakistan (East Bengal until 1956) was less developed than the west, and the discriminatory policies of West Pakistan increased the marginalization of the eastern part of the country. Mujibur was emerging as a prominent leader in the wake of the imposition of Urdu as the official language. His Muslim Students League formed an All-Party State League Action Council in March 1948. Mujibur, also called Mujib, became the joint secretary of the East Pakistan Awami Muslim League (called the Awami League from 1954) when it was formed in June 1949. In 1952 the police brutally crushed the movement to make Bengali one of the official languages of Pakistan. Cracks had already opened in united Pakistan, and it was Mujib who spearheaded the cause of separation from the west. Mujib contested as a candidate of the United Front, which had been formed by the Awami League for the 1954 general elections. The following year the Awami League demanded autonomy for the eastern wing of Pakistan. Under the presidency of General Mohammad Ayub Khan the Bengalis were further alienated. Mujib and the people of East Pakistan witnessed a harsh military regime exploiting and dominating the eastern wing. The Ayub government was dismayed at Mujib’s popularity and imprisoned him many times. Mujib spelled out a six-point program in February 1966 demanding autonomy for all provinces of Pakistan. He was accused of engineering the secession of East Pakistan, and proceedings were initiated against him in the Agartala Conspiracy Case of 1968. In the 1970 elections to the National Assembly of Pakistan, Mujib’s Awami League secured an absolute majority, winning 162 seats out of 313. The new president of Pakistan, Muhammad Yahya Khan, was in no mood to give power to Mujib. The convening of the National Assembly was postponed. On March 25 Mujib declared the independence of East Pakistan, which was renamed Bangladesh. He was taken to West Pakistan in March 1971 to be tried for treason. With Indian military assistance Bangladesh was liberated on December 16, 1971. Meanwhile, the government of Pakistan had sentenced Mujib to death. But
because of international pressure, he was finally released and became the first prime minister of Bangladesh on January 12, 1972. Mujib faced the difficult task of governing the nation, which faced the challenges of rehabilitation and reconstruction. Disagreements with Pakistan remained. Mujib signed a 25-year friendship treaty with India. Most countries recognized Bangladesh, which also became a member of the United Nations. Mujib followed a nonaligned foreign policy. He promulgated a constitution in 1971 containing the principles of secularism, socialism, and democracy. Mujib also launched welfare programs. The Awami Party won the elections of 1973 with a massive majority. But poor governance, corruption, opposition from disgruntled elements, and natural disasters created problems. Mujib declared a state of emergency in 1975. A presidential form of government was initiated with Mujib as president for life. In June the Awami League became the only legal party. On August 15, 1975, Mujib and 15 of his family members were assassinated by young army officers. The military government that followed passed the infamous Indemnity Ordinance giving indemnity to the assassins. It was not until 1998 that the culprits were sentenced to death, when the Awami League government of Sheikh Hasina, daughter of Mujib, came to power. Further reading: Baxter, Craig. Bangladesh: From a Nation to a State. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997; Choudhury, G. W. The Last Days of United Pakistan. Dhaka: Oxford University Press, 1998; Huq, Obaidul. Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib: A Leader with a Difference. London: Radical Asia Publications, 1996; Khan, Zillur R. The Third World Charismat: Sheikh Mujib and the Struggle for Freedom. Dacca: The University Press, 1996. Patit Paban Mishra
Reagan, Ronald
(1911–2004) U.S. president Ronald Wilson Reagan was an actor who served two terms as the 33rd governor of California and later served two terms as the 40th president of the United States. Reagan’s presidency contributed to the end of the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union and witnessed the collapse of communism in eastern europe. At the end of Reagan’s admin-
istration, the United States was enjoying its longest period of peacetime prosperity without recession or depression. His administration cut taxes, reformed the tax code, offered a temporary solution to the Social Security issue, reduced inflation, continued deregulation of business, and increased military spending. Critics have commented that Reagan was unconcerned with income inequality, and his dedication to military spending increased the federal deficit as well as trade deficits internationally and may have been instrumental in causing the stock market crash of 1987. Overall, Reagan was one of the most popular U.S. presidents of the 20th century, exiting office more popular than when he began. Nicknamed the Great Communicator by the media, Reagan dominated the decade of the 1980s in the United States to such an extent that the two are linked inextricably together. Reagan was born on February 6, 1911, in Tampico, Illinois, and was raised with strong Christian values. He attended high school in the nearby town of Dixon. In 1928 Reagan entered Eureka College, where he studied economics and sociology. Reagan graduated in 1932. After graduation, he worked as a radio sports announcer. Following a 1937 screen test, Reagan won a Hollywood contract and began a lengthy acting career, appearing in 53 films over the next two decades. In 1940 he played the role of George Gipp in the film Knute Rockne, All American. In the film, Reagan delivers the memorable line “Win one for the Gipper!” From this role, Reagan acquired the nickname “the Gipper,” which he retained throughout his life. In 1935 Reagan was commissioned as a reserve cavalry officer in the U.S. Army. After the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States became involved in World War II, and Reagan was activated and assigned to the First Motion Picture Unit in the U.S. Army Air Forces, which made training and propaganda films. Reagan’s efforts to go overseas for combat were rejected due to his astigmatism. While in Hollywood, Reagan married actress Jane Wyman in 1940 and had a daughter, Maureen, and later adopted a son, Michael. Following his divorce, Reagan married Nancy Davis, also an actress, in 1952, and had two children, Patricia Ann and Ronald Prescott. Reagan became president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1947 to 1952 and again from 1959 to 1960. Although raised in a strong Democratic household, Reagan shifted his political views, primarily because of the Republican Party’s strong condemnation of communism. He became involved in disputes over the issue of communism in the film industry. During the 1950s
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One of the most popular American presidents in recent history, Ronald Reagan and his policies dominated the 1980s.
Senator Joseph McCarthy initiated a series of hearings to root out communism in the United States. Particular scrutiny was placed on Hollywood, and actors marked as communists faced exile from the film industry. Reagan claimed that Hollywood was being infiltrated by communists and kept watch on suspected actors for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). As Reagan’s film career waned, he moved to television, hosting and performing for, General Electric Theater and starring in television movies. His employment for General Electric required extensive travel as a GE spokesman. Reagan delivered numerous anticommunist speeches, which brought him to the attention of the Republicans. In 1966 Reagan was elected governor of California by a margin of 1 million votes, and he was reelected in 1970. During his first term Reagan froze government hiring but approved tax increases to balance the budget. In 1969 Reagan sent 2,200 National Guard troops to disband a student protest on the Berkeley campus of the University of California. He worked to reform
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welfare and opposed construction projects that hindered conservation or transgressed onto American Indian ranches. Although Reagan supported capital punishment, his efforts to enforce this position were hindered by the Supreme Court of California’s decision to invalidate all death sentences passed prior to 1972. A constitutional amendment quickly overturned this decision. Reagan’s first attempt to secure the Republican nomination for president in 1968 was unsuccessful. He tried again in 1976 against incumbent Gerald Ford, but was narrowly defeated at the Republican National Convention. In 1980 Reagan won the Republican nomination and selected as his running mate former Texas congressman George H. W. Bush. The United States was suffering from a period of high inflation and unemployment, fuel shortages resulting from instability in the petroleum market, and the international humiliation of the yearlong confinement of U.S. hostages in Iran. Reagan became popular, consequently winning in a landslide over incumbent Jimmy Carter. The Republican presidential victory accompanied a 12-seat change in the Senate, the first Republican Senate majority in over 25 years. first days Reagan assumed the office of president on January 20, 1981. The Iran hostage crisis ended with the release of the U.S. captives the same day, which led to allegations that a covert agreement delaying their release had been negotiated between the Iranian government and Reagan’s future cabinet. On March 30 Reagan was nearly killed in an assassination attempt but quickly recovered and returned to office. Reagan’s first official act was to end oil price controls. In 1981 Reagan fired the majority of federal air traffic controllers when they embarked on an illegal strike, setting limits for public employees unions and signaling the acceptability of businesses’ taking stronger bargaining positions with unions. Reagan steered his desired domestic legislation through Congress in an effort to stimulate economic growth and reduce inflation and unemployment. He followed a plan calling for cutbacks on taxes and government expenditures, refusing to deviate from this course when the strengthening of national defenses increased the national deficit. To curb inflation, Reagan supported Federal Reserve Board chairman Paul Volcker’s plan to tighten the monetary supply by dramatically increasing interest rates. Reagan also sponsored wide-ranging tax cuts to boost business investment. Reagan simultaneously limited the growth of
welfare and other social programs. Beginning in 1983 the economy began to recover. However, increased military spending as part of Reagan’s cold war policy caused the national deficit to soar. A renewal of U.S. self-confidence due to a recovering economy and heightened international prestige propelled Reagan and Bush to win their second term in an unprecedented landslide against Democratic challengers Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro, winning the electoral votes in 49 out of 50 states. During his second term, Reagan overhauled the income tax code, eliminating many deductions and exempting millions of people with low incomes. Although Reagan’s opponents claimed his economic policies increased the gap between the rich and the poor, the income of all economic groups rose in real terms. He also passed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, granting compensation to Japanese Americans who had been interned during World War II. Reagan signed legislation authorizing capital punishment for offenses involving murder in the context of illegal drug trafficking and launched a “war on drugs,” which was led by Nancy Reagan. Reagan was staunchly against abortion. Although his appointees to the Supreme Court—including Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman Supreme Court justice—shifted the balance in favor of conservatism, the Supreme Court voted to uphold Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion. The gay rights movement criticized Reagan for not responding adequately to the arrival of HIV-AIDS in the mid-1980s. However, the Reagan administration spent almost $6 billion on HIV and AIDS research. By 1986, Reagan had endorsed large-scale prevention and research efforts. In 1984, Reagan was the first U.S. president to invite an openly homosexual couple to spend an evening at the White House. foreign policy Reagan’s foreign policy during his presidency called for “peace through strength” and a close alliance with Britain. Reagan confronted the Soviet Union head-on, arguing that only from a position of military superiority could the United States negotiate an end to the cold war and secure U.S. interests abroad. Reagan reasoned that the Soviet Union could not keep up with the United States in a full-scale arms race. He increased defense spending 35 percent while seeking improved diplomatic relations with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. In keeping with this Reagan Doctrine, he actively supported anticommunist efforts in Latin America,
Europe, Asia, and Africa. The Reagan administration supported Afghani insurgents, including Osama bin Laden; Poland’s Solidarity movement; the contras in Nicaragua; and rebel forces in Angola. The United States increased military funding for anticommunist dictatorships in Latin America and was accused of assassinating several Latin American heads of state. A communist attempt to seize power in Grenada in 1983 prompted a U.S. invasion. Reagan and Gorbachev negotiated a treaty to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear missiles and to continue disarmament. However, Reagan supported the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which proposed the launching of a space-based defense system to render the United States invulnerable to a nuclear attack. Opponents of the plan labeled it Star Wars and argued that the plan was unrealistic and violated international treaties. In 1985 Reagan conducted a goodwill visit to Germany. He visited Kolmeshohe Cemetery to pay respects to the soldiers there, unaware that many had been members of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s Waffen-SS. Reagan also visited the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where he condemned the Holocaust. Reagan declared war against international terrorism, taking a strong stand against the Lebanese Hizbollah terrorist organization, which was holding Americans as hostages and attacking civilian targets following Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Reagan’s administration also took a strong stance against Palestinian terrorists in the West Bank and Gaza. U.S. involvement in Lebanon led to a limited United Nations mandate for an international force. The September 16, 1982, massacre of Palestinians in Beirut prompted Reagan to form a new international force. Diplomatic pressure forced a peace agreement between Israel and Lebanon and U.S. forces withdrew following an October 1983 bombing that killed over 200 marines. Reagan sent U.S. bombers to Libya after evidence revealed government involvement in an attack on U.S. soldiers in a West Berlin nightclub. Reagan’s administration maintained the controversial position that the Salvadoran FMLN and Honduran guerrilla fighters, as well as a wing of the anti-apartheid African National Congress (ANC), constituted terrorist organizations. During the Iran-Iraq War, Reagan sent naval escorts to the Persian Gulf to maintain the free flow of oil for U.S. use. The Reagan administration came to increasingly side with Iraq under the assumption that Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was less a threat than Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini. While support-
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ing Iraq, the United States covertly supplied Iran with military weapons in order to fund contra rebels in Nicaragua. This arrangement, known as the Iran-contra affair, became a huge scandal. Reagan declared his ignorance of the arrangement. As a result, 10 members of Reagan’s administration were convicted and many others were forced to resign. Reagan addressed the nation from the White House one last time in January 1989, prior to the inauguration of George H. W. Bush as the 41st president. Reagan returned to his estate, Rancho del Cielo, in california, eventually moving to Bel Air, Los Angeles. In 1989 Reagan received an honorary British knighthood and was made Grand Cordon of the Japanese Order of the Chrysanthemum. In the early 1990s he made occasional appearances for the Republican Party and in 1993 was granted the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1994 Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. His health worsened following a fall in January 2001 that shattered his hip and rendered him immobile. By late 2003 Reagan had entered the final stages of Alzheimer’s disease, and he died of pneumonia on June 5, 2004. He was buried at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. See also drug wars, international; McCarthyism; Nicaraguan revolution (1979–1990). Further reading: Ehrman, John. The Eighties: America in the Age of Reagan. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005; Noonan, Peggy. When Character Was King: A Story of Ronald Reagan. New York: Viking Penguin, 2001; Reagan, Ronald. An American Life: The Autobiography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990; ———. The Greatest Speeches of Ronald Reagan, 2nd ed. West Palm Beach, FL: Newsmax. com, 2003; Troy, Gil. Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980s. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. Eric Martone
Rhee, Syngman
(1875–1965) South Korean president Syngman Rhee was the controversial, strongly anticommunist, and increasingly authoritarian first president of South Korea, serving from April 1948 until April 1960. He gained office through a popular election in 1948, led South Korea through the Korean War, and was reelected twice, although not without controversy, before being forced from office in the wake of the fraudulent 1960 election.
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Born in Hwanghae Province on March 26, 1875, Rhee—also known as Yi Sung-man—labored passionately to create a modern, independent Korea. Having studied the Chinese classics and repeatedly failed the civil service examinations, Rhee enrolled in and eventually taught at a Western-style school run by U.S. Methodists. In 1896 he helped found the Independence Club, a Western-leaning nationalist organization hoping to fend off the growing interventions by Japan, Russia, and China in Korean affairs. Weary of his proposed reforms, the conservative Korean government imprisoned Rhee for seven years, during which time he was tortured and also converted to Christianity, which he considered “the religion of liberty.” Freed in 1904, Rhee traveled to the United States to petition U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt to help Koreans oppose expanded Japanese influence. This effort failed, and Japan increased its control and formally annexed Korea in 1910. Rhee stayed on in the United States, where he earned a B.A. from George Washington University in 1907, an M.A. from Harvard in 1908, and a Ph.D. in theology from Princeton in 1910. He returned to Korea in 1910 as chief Korean secretary of the Young Men’s Christian Association in Seoul. A year later he was forced into exile because of his organizing against Japanese rule. He would spend the next 33 years in Hawaii and Washington, D.C., where he would continue working on behalf of a modern, independent Korea. In 1920 he became the first president of the exiled Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea. His main strategy was to build support for Korea in the international community, particularly the United States. After defeating the Japanese in World War II, the United States occupied the southern half of Korea. Rhee, by now back in the country, helped found the National Society for the Rapid Realization of Korean Independence. In 1948 he handily won United Nations (UN)– sponsored elections for president of the Republic of Korea (South Korea). He was known for his desire to reunite the Korean Peninsula, his commitment to democracy, and his strong opposition to communism. In the two years after his election, Rhee intensified cold war tensions in East Asia by calling for a “march north” to destroy Kim Il Sung’s communist regime. But it was Kim’s Communist forces that invaded South Korea in June 1950. After the Korean War broke out in June 1950, Rhee proved a steady, but difficult, ally of the United States. In 1951 he reorganized the military in order to
root out corruption and inefficiency. But he also routinely undermined U.S. efforts by rejecting any peace deal that stopped short of reunifying Korea. He also called on the United States to counter Chinese intervention more aggressively, including bombing China. By August 1953, however, the prospect of intensified hostilities with the north and worsening relations with the United States forced Rhee to accept a divided Korea. The United States deployed troops along the demilitarization zone both to protect the south from invasion from the north and to thwart Rhee’s aggressive tendencies. For most of the 1950s, Rhee repeatedly worked to consolidate his hold on power. In 1951 he founded the Liberal Party. In 1952 he engineered changes in the constitution to guarantee his victory in the election. When these changes were rejected in favor of a parliamentary system, he declared martial law. In the ensuing general election, Rhee won 72 percent of the vote. As the 1956 election approached, Rhee once again forced changes into the constitution to eliminate the provisions limiting presidents to two terms. He then won the election with 55 percent of the vote, a low number considering that his rival, Sin Ik-hui, had suffered a heart attack and died 10 days earlier. South Korea made significant economic and social progress under Rhee. The expansion of the school system after independence and the modernization of the military contributed greatly to the changes that transformed Korea. Massive U.S. aid combined with the government’s import-substitution policies yielded strong growth. In 1960 Rhee and the Liberal Party once again rigged the presidential election. This time, however, a protest movement led by students became widespread, and governmental security forces killed 142 protesters. These events forced Rhee’s resignation. He fled to the United States and died five years later in 1965 in Hawaii. Further reading: Kim, Quee-young. The Fall of Syngman Rhee. Berkeley, CA: UC Institute of East Asian Studies, 1983; Lee, Chong-Sik. Syngman Rhee: The Prison Years of a Young Radical. Seoul: Yonsoi University Press, 2001; MacDonald, Donald Stone. U.S.-Korean Relations from Liberation to Self-Reliance: The Twenty-Year Record. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992; Rhee, Syngman. The Spirit of Independence: A Primer of Korean Modernization and Reform. HanKyo Kim, trans. and annot. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001; Stueck, William. “Syngman Rhee, the Truman Doctrine, and American Policy Toward Korea, 1947–1948.”
Rhodesia/Zimbabwe independence movements
In Rethinking the Korean War: A New Diplomatic and Strategic History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. Thomas Robertson
Rhodesia/Zimbabwe independence movements Zimbabwe, or Rhodesia, as it was known until 1980, is a landlocked nation of 13 million people occupying the plateau between the Limpopo and Zambezi Rivers, bordered by Zambia to the north, Botswana to the west, Mozambique to the east, and South Africa to the south. While the rest of Britain’s African colonies, including two of Rhodesia’s neighbors—Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi)—gained independence as part of a wave of decolonization, Rhodesia remained a bastion of minority white rule because of its influential European population. Even after the country gained majority rule in 1980, white control of land continued to be a crucial issue in Zimbabwe. At midcentury, mostly because of the country’s substantial mineral wealth and fertile soil for tobacco cultivation, Rhodesia’s white population enjoyed one of the highest standards of living in the world. The country’s black residents, however, who made up over 95 percent of the population, possessed little political power and received just 5 percent of the nation’s income. Having gained control by force roughly a half-century earlier, whites made up one-twentieth of the population but held one-third of the land. At the end of World War II the political winds began to change. Britain moved to grant independence to many of its colonies in Asia and Africa. Rhodesia, which had been a British-chartered corporate colony at the turn of the century and a self-governing British colony since 1923, took on a new political form in 1953 with the establishment of the Central African Federation. Southern Rhodesia dominated this confederation; it exploited the copper of Northern Rhodesia and the labor of Nyasaland. The arrival of independent rule in Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi) in 1964 brought considerable anxiety to the white population of Southern Rhodesia, who believed that Britain favored majority rule. In response, in November of 1965, Ian Douglas Smith, an unabashed champion of white rule, announced the Unilateral Declaration of Independence, which cut the country’s ties with Britain and established the independent nation of Rhodesia. In a referendum,
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overwhelming numbers of the white population supported Smith. Britain responded by imposing diplomatic and economic sanctions. The cold war struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union for influence around the world, including in the nations of Africa, complicated these developments. U.S. relations with Ian Smith’s whiteruled Rhodesia at the time shows the ambivalent position of the United States. On the one hand the United States valued the support of Rhodesia, which contained vast reserves of strategic minerals, especially chromium, and adopted a strongly anticommunist stance. Yet, at the same time, the United States worried that support for Smith’s white supremacist government would cost it needed friends in rapidly decolonizing Africa. In 1965 U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson condemned Smith’s unilateral declaration of independence and, following Britain’s lead, imposed economic sanctions. Although these sanctions could have been even stronger, U.S. trade there declined from $29 million in 1965 to $3.7 million in 1968, a real blow to the Rhodesian economy. At the same time, though, Rhodesia received substantial support from some within the United States. The Byrd Amendment of 1971, which was enacted with the support of the Richard Nixon administration, punched a significant hole in the sanctions against Rhodesia. According to this law, the United States could not ban the importation from a noncommunist nation any material needed for national defense if that same material would otherwise be purchased from a communist nation. Since chromium, a key resource for many modern weapon systems, was also imported from the Soviet Union, the United States was forced to allow trade with Rhodesia. Imports of chromium grew from $500,000 in 1965, to $13 million in 1972, to $45 million in 1975. Organized black resistance to white rule in Rhodesia took shape in the late 1950s, and the two main oppositional parties, parties that would dominate Zimbabwean politics well beyond independence, were established in the early 1960s. In 1957 the African National Congress, based in Bulawayo, and the African National Youth League, based in Salisbury (present-day Harare), combined to form the Southern Rhodesian African National Congress under Joshua Nkomo. Banned in 1959, this group was succeeded by the National Democratic Party, which was itself banned in December 1961. Shortly thereafter, the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) was established. A major split occurred in 1963, resulting in the formation of the Zimbabwe
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African National Union (ZANU). ZAPU was mostly Ndebele and Chinese-leaning; ZANU was mostly Shona and Soviet-leaning. ZAPU and ZANU adopted different strategies at different times. During the 1960s, as white Rhodesians like Ian Smith grew more extreme, African nationalist methods became more militant and confrontational. Both ZANU and ZAPU began attacking white farms in 1964, but they quickly realized they were outmatched by the Rhodesian military. A more moderate group, the African National Council—organized by Bishop Abel Muzorewa—sprang up during the early 1970s. None of these groups had much success. The situation began to shift during the late 1970s. In 1975, after long wars, two Portuguese colonies in southern Africa, Mozambique and Angola, gained their independence. Black-ruled Mozambique became a safe haven for many of the guerrilla groups opposing the white regime in Rhodesia. In 1975 the two most important of these groups—ZANU, under Robert Mugabe, and ZAPU, under Joshua Nkomo—joined forces to become the Patriotic Front. Jimmy Carter’s victory in the U.S. presidential election of 1976 also played a role in shifting the context of Rhodesian politics. Concerned about the U.S. reputation in other parts of black Africa, the Carter administration began to push for a settlement to the conflict. In general, the United States supported majority rule with protection of white interests. The British called the Lancaster House Conference in an attempt to broker a lasting solution. The resulting settlement guaranteed majority rule for Zimbabwe, a transitional period for whites, and a multiparty system. At the center of the settlement was a new constitution, which gave the vote to all Africans 18 years and older, reserved 28 seats in the parliament for whites for 10 years, and guaranteed private property rights. In the election of February 1980, voting mostly followed ethnic lines. ZANU–Popular Front won a clear majority, making its leader, Robert Mugabe, the prime minister. ZAPU–Popular Front, which had recently split from ZANU-PF, joined the white members of parliament in opposition. Taking its name from the 14th- and 15th-century stone city of Great Zimbabwe, Rhodesia became Zimbabwe on April 18, 1980. The war for majority rule, which had cost over 25,000 lives, most of them black, was over. Under Robert Mugabe’s rule, Zimbabwe in the 1980s pursued socialist-leaning policies not unlike those of many other countries in Africa. It expanded social programs that had been denied under white rule. And, although it claimed to want to redistribute land,
in reality it moved slowly to break up successful white farms. This cost the regime politically but it enabled Zimbabwe to continue to feed itself. Overall, during the early 1980s many Zimbabweans saw real improvements in the quality of their lives. As the 1980s unfolded, Mugabe began to show authoritarian tendencies. Even early on he rounded up opponents, censored the press, and gave broad authority to security forces. At first he was able to get away with this because of his wide support, especially in rural areas. Mugabe won the March 1996 election with 92.7 percent of the vote, but only a very small number of Zimbabweans bothered to vote. The decrease in voter participation revealed the growing discontent of Zimbabweans with Mugabe. On top of this, in the early 1980s a civil war that would last until 1987 broke out in Matabeleland, a stronghold of the ZAPU-PF. In the late 1990s Mugabe initiated two very controversial programs. In 1997, he began seizing whiteowned land without compensation and quietly encouraging landless blacks to move onto white farms. These farms had previously fed the nation and provided work for large numbers of people, mostly black. In 2002 Mugabe appropriated the remaining white land and ordered white farmers to offer payments to former workers. Because many of the blacks who moved onto the white land had few farming skills, the nation soon faced a food crisis. Critics, moreover, claimed that Mugabe handed out the best land to his family, friends, and close supporters. In another controversial move, in 1998 Mugabe deployed the military in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to help its government fend off an armed rebellion The situation in Zimbabwe seems precarious. During the 2002 elections Mugabe rigged the voting and jailed opponents, especially the supporters of the Movement for Democratic Change, led by Morgan Tsvangirai. Neighboring nations supported Mugabe but other African nations, such as Kenya and Ghana, condemned his move. Famine conditions persist in Zimbabwe, and the people struggle with skyrocketing prices and extremely high unemployment. That no system is in place to determine a successor to the aging Mugabe portends a divisive struggle to come. Further reading: Banana, Canaan S., ed. Turmoil and Tenacity: Zimbabwe 1890–1990. Harare: College Press, 1989; Herbst, Jeffrey. State Politics in Zimbabwe. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990; Horne, Gerald. From the Barrel of a Gun: The United States and the War Against
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Zimbabwe, 1965–1980. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001; Jenkins, Carolyn. “The Politics of Economic Policy-Making in Zimbabwe.” Journal of Modern African Studies 35, no. 4 (1997); Special issue on Zimbabwe. Africa Insight (Pretoria, May 2000). Tom Robertson
Roe v. Wade The landmark 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade struck down state abortion laws as illegal because of their infringement on the privacy rights inherent in the U.S. Constitution. This case was the climax of a series of actions by doctors’ organizations, state legislatures, and women’s groups to legalize abortion in order to regulate surgical procedures. However, the case was widely seen by Christian groups and political conservatives as opening the floodgates for unfettered aborting of viable human beings. The aftermath of Roe included the formation of coherent pro-choice and pro-life organizations, a struggle with definitions of when life is created, and the magnification of the state management of abortions to a topic handled by Congress, the Supreme Court, and the president. Debates over the legality of abortion were ignited by a physicians’ movement to allow abortions during the 1940s and 1950s. Led by Drs. Alan and Manfred Guttmacher, a group of doctors lobbied state legislatures to allow abortions. Their activism in favor of abortion was a reaction to the unsanitary and dangerous illegal abortions that were being performed throughout the United States. Indeed, their lobbying was effective in getting states like New York and Hawaii to liberalize their abortion policies. Another factor in the abortion debate was the growth of a well-organized feminist movement in the 1960s. The commercial viability of a contraceptive pill, funded by Sarah McCormick in 1960, and the subsequent focus of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations on family planning encouraged more assertive control by women over their own bodies. The creation of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966 and the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) in 1969 gave avenues of political strength to women throughout the United States. A significant pre-Roe ruling by the Supreme Court was Griswold v. Connecticut, in which the Supreme Court ruled against Connecticut state law regulating birth control. Justice William Douglas used the right to
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privacy interpretation of the Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Amendments to justify ruling against state law. Justice Byron White opined that the state laws did not ensure the welfare of the public as part of a strict interpretation of the law. Griswold proved to be a strong legal predecessor to Roe v. Wade, as many of the same justifications were applied to the majority opinion. The plaintiff in Roe v. Wade was Norma McCorvey, a pregnant woman who wanted to have an abortion in Dallas County, Texas, but was unable to due to Texas legislation banning the act. McCorvey was not pregnant by the time the Supreme Court heard and deliberated the case, which became a factor in the dissents of Byron White and William Rehnquist. The defending party in the case was Henry Wade, the Dallas County district attorney, joined by defense attorney John Tolle. Tolle’s defense for the Texas legislation was that the fetus was alive at conception and the state’s duty is to protect all people, especially those in utero. Writing an amicus brief on the plaintiff’s behalf were Planned Parenthood of America and NOW, representing the more liberal interpretation of the issue. In contrast, groups like Americans United for Life wrote amicus briefs on behalf of the state of Texas. plaintiff’s favor The decision in Roe v. Wade came on January 22, 1973. The Supreme Court decided 7-2 in favor of the plaintiff and, in an opinion written by Justice Harry Blackmun, provided a vague caveat to abortion laws, a prescription for how state legislatures could deal with the issue of abortion, and no ruling on the viability of life. Blackmun stated that abortion was not clearly a right beyond reproach but felt that the greater harm to due process rights inherent in the Fourteenth Amendment did not justify keeping abortion illegal. The opinion also provided states with limits as to how they could legislate abortion. In the first trimester, states could not prevent abortions. States would be allowed to regulate or limit abortions in the second trimester and could prohibit abortions in the third trimester. Several justices, while agreeing with Blackmun’s general assessment, wrote concurring opinions. Justice William Douglas, a proponent of privacy in Griswold, used the same reasoning for his decision in Roe. Justice Potter Stewart felt that the time was right for the freedom of choice. Justice Warren Burger concurred with Blackmun’s interpretation of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and leaned toward Douglas’s interpretation in Griswold of a multifaceted constitutional basis for privacy rights.
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In dissent were Justices Byron White and William Rehnquist. Justice White dissented for purely constitutional reasons, stating that overturning Texas laws against abortion was out of the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. Rehnquist held a firm, conservative line on abortion. In the first place, he wrote, the plaintiff was not pregnant during the case and therefore her case was inappropriate. Rehnquist felt that even if McCorvey were pregnant during the case, her right to privacy was not violated by rejection of an abortion. Finally, Rehnquist felt that the Court ruling in favor of legal abortion was too sweeping of an act for a judicial body. While Roe legalized abortion throughout the United States, the pro-life movement that protested this decision became a prevalent cultural force in America in the decades that followed. As women’s groups and prochoice groups grew around the beginning of the 1970s, pro-life groups organized to lobby for maximum legal restrictions and to restrict access to clinics performing abortions. In the immediate aftermath of Roe, the American Right to Life Committee was established as an organizing body against abortion. The Friends of Life, established by Joseph Scheidler, established branches around the country to protest abortion clinics. The more extreme pro-life groups turned to violence to prove their point, with the first abortion clinic bombing taking place in 1982. See also feminism, worldwide. Further reading: Garrow, David J. Liberty and Sexuality: The Right to Privacy and the Making of Roe v. Wade. New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1994; Rubin, Eva. Abortion, Politics, and the Courts: Roe v. Wade and Its Aftermath. New York: Greenwood Press, 1987; Solinger, Rickie. Abortion Wars: A Half Century of Struggle, 1950–2000. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Nicholas Katers
Rosenberg, Julius and Ethel
(1918–1953 and 1915–1953) accused American spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were accused of illegally giving information about U.S. atomic research to the Soviet Union. They were convicted of espionage on March 29, 1951, and executed on June 19, 1953. Their codefendant in the trial, Morton Sobell, received a 30year sentence. The trial was highly publicized and took place during the so-called Red Scare, when many in the United States felt their way of life was threatened by
the Soviet Union and by the expansion of communism in general. For this and other reasons, including antiSemitism, many believe that the Rosenbergs did not get a fair trial and that Ethel Rosenberg in particular was not guilty of the charges. Julius Rosenberg was born in New York City and attended religious and public schools and City College, from which he graduated with a degree in electrical engineering. He was active in the Steinmetz Club, a branch of the Young Communists League, and later joined the American Communist Party. Rosenberg was a civilian employee of the U.S. Army Signal Corps from 1940 to 1945. Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg also attended public and religious schools in New York City and went to work for a shipping firm after graduation from high school. She was active as a union organizer and joined the Young Communist League and later the American Communist Party. The Rosenbergs were married in 1939 and had two sons, Michael and Robert. The Rosenberg trial can only be understood in the context of the development of atomic weaponry and the cold war. The United States is the only nation ever to have used atomic weapons: Atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the closing days of World War II. Information regarding the production of such weapons was closely guarded, and the United States believed it was the only country with the scientific knowledge to produce an atomic bomb. When the USSR tested its first atomic weapon in 1949, people were shocked at how rapidly they had developed atomic weapons capability. The explanation was simple: The Soviets had access to some of the information the United States believed had been kept secret. In 1950 the German/British scientist Klaus Fuchs, who had worked in the United States on the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb, confessed to having passed essential information to the Soviet Union. The investigation resulting from this confession led FBI agents to David Greenglass, Ethel Rosenberg’s brother, who confessed his own involvement in a spy ring that he said also included his wife, Ruth, and his brother-in-law, Julius Rosenberg. The “Venona Cables” were a key source of evidence in the investigation of Soviet spy operations in the United States in the 1940s. These cables carried encrypted messages to and from the Soviet Union and revealed the extent of Soviet espionage activity in the United States during that time. The Venona Cables presented clear evidence that Julius Rosenberg was guilty of espionage and implicated David and Ruth Greenglass as well. They did not provide similar evidence against Ethel
Russian Federation
Rosenberg, who was convicted largely on the testimony of her brother, David Greenglass. He later admitted that at least some of his testimony against the Rosenbergs was false and that he lied in order to protect his wife, who was granted immunity from prosecution. Many people around the world were shocked by the Rosenbergs’ execution, particularly when more important spies received lighter sentences. For instance, Klaus Fuchs, who provided the Soviet Union with information essential to building an atomic weapon, was sentenced to 14 years in prison and served nine. The execution of Ethel Rosenberg in particular shocked many people, since there was little evidence against her and it was presumed that the threat of execution was meant to coerce her to testify against her husband or him to testify against others. Both Rosenbergs refused to confess or to name others, a decision that may have led to their deaths. There were many protests worldwide against their convictions and appeals stop the execution, including one from Pope Pius XII. Public interest in the Rosenberg trial remained strong, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg assumed a place as characters and symbols in popular culture. Further reading: Benson, Robert L. The Venona Story, http://www.nsa.gov/publications/publi00039.cfm (cited June 2006); Garber, Marjorie and Rebecca L. Walkowitz, eds. Secret Agents: The Rosenberg Case, McCarthyism, and Fifties America. New York: Routledge, 1995; Neville, John F. The Press, the Rosenbergs, and the Cold War. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995; Radosh, Ronald and Joyce Milton. The Rosenberg File. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997; Roberts, Sam. The Brother: The Untold Story of Atomic Spy David Greenglass and How He Sent His Sister, Ethel Rosenberg, to the Electric Chair. New York: Random House, 2001. Sarah Boslaugh
Russian Federation In the years after 1991 Russia experienced a revolution in the name of reform. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had been a one-party dictatorship that strove to control all aspects of life. Its collapse unleashed a host of social forces and triggered an array of experiments as people sought simultaneously to create a democratic government, a market economy, and a civil society. Other countries, including other remnants of the Soviet Union, were attempting similar experiments on different scales at the same time. No one, however, had ever
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attempted this before, and there was no blueprint to follow. During this period, the administration of Boris Yeltsin would be identified with the destruction of the old structures, a struggle among alternative visions, and chaotic and sometimes contradictory efforts to build something new. The administration of Vladimir Putin would represent a longing to reestablish order, stability, and security. The Soviet collapse in 1991 came with remarkable rapidity. Unlike the collapse of czarist Russia in 1917, which was also sudden, this one was neither preceded by a world war nor followed by a civil war. There were relatively few violent conflicts, and those tended to be clashes between rival nationalisms. The last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, had underestimated the attraction of nationalism to his country’s various constituent peoples and had overestimated people’s loyalty to the communist system. In forcing people, officials and citizens alike, to conceal their personal beliefs as well as inconvenient political and economic facts, the Soviet system had denied its own leaders the ability to gauge the true situation and had denied people in general the possibility of fully developing their own ideas. Gorbachev’s efforts to reform the system, in part by releasing the energies of the citizenry in the hope of using them against a sclerotic bureaucracy, resulted in the system’s demise. Free multicandidate elections to a new national legislature in 1989 and elections to republic-level legislatures in 1990 unleashed a mass of rebellious and conflicting demands. In the course of the year, most of the republics declared “sovereignty” within the Soviet Union, that is, they asserted that republic law would henceforth be above federal law. The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, as the Russian portion of the Soviet Union was officially known, did so on June 12, 1990. At about the same time, the media began to free itself of government control. On the anniversary of the sovereignty declaration, June 12, 1991, while the republic was still part of the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin, a former Communist Party official who had fallen out with the leadership, became Russia’s first elected president. A failed reactionary coup launched by party, military, and police officials in August 1991 was the final blow in the centrifugal process that was tearing the Soviet Union apart. In the aftermath, the Communist Party was dissolved and no comparable integrative institution was created to replace it. Yeltsin began appearing alongside Gorbachev, the Soviet president, as a coequal. Key republics, especially Ukraine, began to
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believe they would be better off without the “burden” of the other republics and moved toward independence. At the very least, they ceased forwarding tax receipts to the capital, compelling Russia to take over responsibility for financing central state functions. On December 8, 1991, confronted with Ukraine’s precipitous unilateral independence, Yeltsin and the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus declared their republics a Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), even though Russia had never formally withdrawn from the Soviet Union. Leaders of other republics, petrified at the prospect of their sudden isolation, immediately demanded membership in the CIS as well. On December 25, 1991, Gorbachev resigned from the presidency in frustration. No one attempted to replace him, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics legally ceased to exist. In many ways it had already evaporated, although just when this occurred is difficult to determine. After a brief attempt to maintain unified CIS armed forces, the republics took control of the military assets of their respective territories and created their own armies. Republics with nuclear arms stationed on their territories agreed to send them to Russia. Each republic also acquired its portion of the assets of the Committee for State Security, which continued to exist in some form. In Russia the KGB underwent a series of renamings and reorganizations that ultimately left it as five separate entities: one each for internal security, foreign intelligence, border defense, communications security, and the personal protection of state leaders. Redefinition With the Soviet Union gone, the next question was what would replace it. The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic eventually renamed itself the Russian Federation. The re-creation of a Russian national identity was somewhat complicated, not only by the presence of more than 120 ethnic minorities within the federation’s borders and by the fact that some 25 million ethnic Russians were now living as minorities in the 14 other successor states of the Soviet Union, but also by the fact that the pre-Soviet Russian state had included the entire Soviet territory. In the other former Soviet republics, as in Eastern Europe, the communist system could be viewed as something imposed by the Russians. There, nationalists, anticommunists, democrats, and economic reformers could form coalitions, at least in the beginning. In the Russian Federation, although some Russian nationalists had seen the other republics as a burden, others had identified with the Soviet Union as a great power and saw its collapse as a tragedy.
Some adherents of the Soviet system and some Russian nationalists nostalgic for the old empire saw in the CIS a potential replacement that would ultimately amount to a rebirth of the Soviet Union. This never came about. The leaders of the various republics focused on their own entities, and the CIS itself failed to develop into an alternative power center. Rather, the CIS functioned as a loose association that oversaw the peaceful severing of the numerous ties that linked the republics to one another. Russia, not the CIS, inherited the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons, United Nations seat, overseas embassies, and foreign debt. This, however, did not prevent Russia from pressuring the more reluctant successor states into joining the CIS during the 1990s. Only the three Baltic States remained outside. In the early days, Russians were concerned that the unraveling might not stop with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Within the Russian Federation were former “autonomous soviet socialist republics,” now simply termed “republics,” regions with a substantial non-Russian ethnic population. Several of these declared sovereignty over their natural resources and asserted the primacy of their laws over federation law. Some appeared to be contemplating independence. In March 1992 all but Tatarstan and Chechnya signed the new Federation Treaty; Yeltsin was compelled to renegotiate center-periphery relations on an ad hoc basis with several individual republics and even ethnic Russian regions. Tatarstan signed such an agreement in February 1994. In the end only Chechnya carried out the secessionist threat, triggering two wars with the Russian army. Politically, two tendencies were prominent in the early years of Russian independence. For members of the first group, the highest-priority goals were the establishment of democratic norms and the rule of law, the creation of a viable market economy, and integration into the Western world. For the second group, the highest priorities were building a state strong enough to defend itself, both internally and externally; assuring that national industries survived; and preserving Russian uniqueness. Constitutionally, the form that the Russian government was to take was also under dispute. The muchamended constitution of 1978 remained in force while negotiations continued over a new Russian constitution. In this, as in economic policy, Yeltsin and the legislature took strongly opposed positions. The legislature at the time continued the cumbersome form innovated in the Gorbachev era: a Congress of People’s Deputies, with 1,068 members, that was supposed to meet twice a year, vote on the most important issues, and elect
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Saint Basil’s Cathedral in the Kremlin in Moscow during the Soviet era. The Soviet Union was a significant example of communism in the world. With the splintering of the Soviet Union, the different republics that had formed the union sought to redefine themselves.
from among its own members a smaller legislature— the Supreme Soviet—to meet between its own sessions. The constitution’s provision that the legislature was the supreme state body was not modified after the creation of the elected Russian presidency in 1991. Crisis and Confrontation The period from the end of 1991 to late 1993 was marked by economic crisis and political confrontation that ended in bloodshed. The two poles of confrontation centered on the reformist presidency and the holdover parliament, the Congress of People’s Deputies, which fought a protracted battle over who held ultimate authority. For the post of prime minister, Yeltsin named Yegor Gaidar, a young academic who had taught himself market economics during the late Soviet period, but the legislature refused to confirm him. Gaidar, nonetheless, continued in office as acting prime minister for one year.
The economy was in dire shape, quite apart from the normal inefficiencies of the centrally planned Soviet system. In the name of economic reform the Gorbachev government had ceased issuing orders to state-owned economic enterprises, but he had failed to establish the institutions of a market economy, resulting in a staterun system that did not work properly. The breakup of the Soviet state exacerbated the situation by disrupting economic ties between regions. Gaidar’s response was a rapid shift, often termed “shock therapy,” to free prices, balanced budgets, and monetary restraint. This went into effect on January 1, 1992, and resulted in an enormous leap in prices in addition to the already existing shortages of supply. Normally, the shortages and rising prices should have worked as an incentive for enterprises to increase production. State enterprises, however, had not been privatized, and adequate market-based incentives had not been established. Wholesale trade, at the time, was still widely regarded as a form of illegal “speculation.”
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The implicit assumption that an economy dominated by gigantic plants producing military equipment could instantaneously convert to the production of consumer goods was probably naive in any event. Managers commonly viewed the inflation as an opportunity to increase revenues while working less. When monetary restraint restricted cash flows, enterprise managers informally extended credit to each other and expended their political influence trying to get subsidies reinstated. The Congress of People’s Deputies was the main focus of their attention. Elected in March 1990, the Congress was permeated with state-enterprise managers and former communists, most of whom now called themselves “independents.” It repeatedly doled out payments to bankrupt enterprises, undermining the intended impact of Gaidar’s policies; issued resolutions that contradicted government policies; and threatened the president with impeachment. For his part, Yeltsin responded with the threat to establish a “presidential republic.” Each side ignored the acts of the other, contributing to a growing general disregard for the law. The personification of resistance to the president was the speaker of the Congress, Ruslan Khasbulatov; he and vice president Aleksandr Rutskoi moved steadily closer to the opposition. Both had been Yeltsin allies at the beginning of the transition. In late 1992 Gaidar left the office of prime minister. His replacement, Viktor Chernomyrdin, was initially more acceptable to the Congress. Chernomyrdin was a hybrid bureaucrat-entrepreneur. As minister of the gas industry, he had participated in a “spontaneous privatization” that converted the ministry into one of Russia’s largest and most profitable companies, Gazprom. Nonetheless Chernomyrdin and his finance minister, Boris Fedorov, maintained the austerity policies and even closed some inefficient state enterprises. A referendum on economic reform and the division of power between the executive and legislative branches in April 1993 gave Yeltsin enough support to press ahead with his programs. Yeltsin and the legislature each began drawing up a new draft constitution. The crisis came to a head in September 1993. To break the impasse, Yeltsin dissolved the Congress of People’s Deputies and called for a referendum on a new constitution and elections for a new legislature in December. Meeting in emergency session, the Congress impeached Yeltsin and declared Rutskoi president. On Yeltsin’s order, army units surrounded the legislative headquarters on September 27, but 180 members refused to leave. After a standoff of several days, Rutskoi called for a popular uprising, which
led to some street disorders but not the outpouring of support that he had anticipated. Armed men seized the mayor’s office on October 3 and attempted to take the Ostankino television facility, where a firefight with Interior Ministry troops lasted for several hours. At this point, the army dropped the neutral position it had sought to maintain. On October 4 tanks opened fire, and by that afternoon the rebel leaders—including Khasbulatov and Rutskoi—had emerged and surrendered. After the “October events,” no parliament would defy the president so openly again. Disputes, however, were far from over. Constitution and Elections Yeltsin’s draft constitution was approved by referendum in December 1993, in the shadow of the October events. It created a bicameral legislature, called the Federal Assembly (Federal’noe Sobranie). The upper house, the Federation Council (Soviet Federatsii), had two members representing each of the country’s constituent regions, territories, and republics. The lower house, the State Duma (Gosudarstvennaia Duma), had 450 members, half of them elected from single-member districts and half from party lists. The legislature was real, not a rubber stamp, but the constitution clearly gave the preponderance of power to the president. The president named the prime minister and cabinet, who were responsible to him. The cabinet, therefore, did not have to reflect the distribution of parties in the State Duma, so there was no incentive to form coalitions to build a parliamentary majority. Initially, committee chairmanships were doled out among parties and factions in proportion to the number of seats they held. Technically, the State Duma had the right to approve or disapprove the president’s choice for prime minister, but if it rejected three candidates it was the legislature, not the government, that was subject to dissolution. Moreover, the president had the power to issue decrees on his own. The first post-Soviet parliamentary elections were held simultaneously with the referendum approving the constitution, two years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. A number of political organizations had essentially evaporated in the interim. The parties that did exist were often small, fractious, personalistic, and only loosely connected to the electorate. Parties arose, combined, split, recombined, and vanished with great ease. The most substantial and organized party was the newly constituted Communist Party of the Russian Federation, although it lacked anything resembling the
status and power of the former Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The results of the elections were far from what Yeltsin and the reformers would have hoped for. The largest percentage of votes in the party-list portion of the ballot went to the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, a misnamed authoritarian, ultranationalistic grouping with a leader, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who was once described as a “dangerous buffoon.” The communists came in second. The reformists had split the vote by dividing into four separate parties that constantly squabbled among themselves, the two most important being Gaidar’s neoliberal Russia’s Choice and the more social-democratic Yabloko. Despite the evident potential for renewed polarization, Russian politics did not return to the chaos of the pre-October days but settled down into a relatively normal pattern. Politicians of various stripes gradually became accustomed to open politics and even adept at it. Despite their extremist rhetoric, the ultranationalists proved relatively supportive of the government, and the communists could be counted on for a backroom deal when the need arose. The fractious reform parties, never satisfied with compromise, often created the greatest difficulty for the reform process. Gaidar’s original reform plan came to be implemented more consistently, without Gaidar. Prime Minister Chernomyrdin became increasingly prominent, while Yeltsin occasionally receded into the background amid rumors of drinking and the state of his health. Economic policy was no longer undermined by subsidies granted to bankrupt factories by the legislature. Also, the privatization program made progress, although this required a presidential decree. The economic situation began to stabilize, but it did not fully recover and grow. With new legislative elections planned in December 1995, Yeltsin eliminated elections for the upper house and determined that each jurisdiction would be represented by its governor and its legislative speaker. He also attempted to create two new parties as the basis for a two-party system: One, a center-right organization intended to become the government party, was led by Prime Minister Chernomyrdin; the other, envisioned as a center-left loyal opposition, was led by Ivan Rybkin. Chernomyrdin’s party, called Our Home Is Russia, managed to draw about 10 percent of the vote as long as he was prime minister. The second party, which was actually listed on the ballot as “Ivan Rybkin’s bloc,” never got off the ground. The relatively poor showing, if nothing else, indicated the limits on Yeltsin’s ability to manipulate the electorate.
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Forty-three parties participated in the 1995 elections, but only four of them surpassed the 5 percent threshold necessary to obtain seats under the proportional-representation system. The four that did succeed were the Communists, the ultranationalist Liberal Democrats, Our Home Is Russia, and the socialdemocratic Yabloko. The Communists received the largest share this time, setting the stage for Russia’s first post-Soviet presidential election, to be held in two rounds in June and July 1996. The Communists’ hard core of support constituted about 20–30 percent of the electorate at this time. Support was especially strong among pensioners and others who had suffered extreme hardships during the inflation and chaos of the early reform period. They had trouble, however, breaking beyond that core. Yeltsin, who had been doing very poorly in opinion polls, ran an anti-Communist campaign and eked out a plurality of 35 percent in the first round. Communist candidate Gennadii Zyuganov finished just behind him with 32 percent. Eight other candidates were eliminated from the second round. After hiring the third-place candidate as his national security adviser, Yeltsin then managed to consolidate the anti-Communist vote and was reelected in the second round, 54 percent to 40 percent. Significantly, all sides accepted the results of the election without protests or claims of fraud. Privatization and Oligarchs The establishment of new start-up businesses and the privatization of state enterprises proved difficult in Russia. Gigantic state enterprises had been designed as monopolies from the beginning, and adapting them to a competitive economy would be a true challenge. Moreover, private business was widely considered unseemly if not criminal; even small-scale street vendors were deemed an unsightly embarrassment. Russians found private ownership of land and natural resources objectionable. Few people, of course, had the money to start a business. Nor were inflation and rising crime good incentives to invest. Five years into the reform period, Russia had only half as many start-up businesses as Poland, a country with a fourth as many people. A small number of people, however, discovered a way of manipulating the half-reformed economy of the late 1980s and early 1990s to accumulate vast amounts of capital. Officials in economic ministries would declare portions of the ministry to be private companies. Factory managers would establish private businesses on the side and then lease the factory’s facilities to themselves.
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Oil proved an especially useful asset for wealth generation. Fearing the political consequences of allowing domestic oil prices to rise to world levels, Russian leaders had made it possible to export oil at world prices, but maintained controlled domestic prices at less than 1 percent of the world price. Using connections and borrowed money, some people were able to buy large quantities of oil at domestic prices and sell it abroad for 100 times what they had paid. When large-scale privatization of state enterprises became a government priority, these were the people who had the resources and the connections to take advantage of it. In the first phase of official privatization, starting in December 1991, small enterprises were sold off and larger ones were reorganized as joint-stock corporations. Arrangements were made for the workers and managers of smaller enterprises to acquire controlling interests for little or no money. This meant that the same managers continued to control an enterprise, but reformers hoped the fact of ownership would give them a stake in the factory’s success and sever their dependence on the state budget. If nothing else, this would undermine the political strength of the state economic bureaucracy, a center of resistance to reform. In June 1992 a new element was added: a voucher program for the privatization of the now-corporatized medium and larger enterprises. Each citizen was issued a voucher worth 10,000 rubles, a total of some 144 million vouchers, to be invested in corporations or investment funds or simply traded or sold. This program was intended to accelerate privatization and to give common citizens a stake in the economy and the reform process, but since the vouchers were distributed for free it did not generate revenues for the state. The voucher phase was largely completed by mid-1994. Some 100,000 enterprises had been privatized, and they employed 80 percent of the workforce. Many people had simply sold their vouchers for cash or later sold their shares, allowing well-placed people—such as factory managers and former government functionaries—to gain control of plants. This eroded the objective of encouraging widespread ownership, although it did not completely nullify it. The advantages that accrued to insiders generated resentment in the population. The next phase of privatization called for the direct sale of shares in large enterprises, especially those in the energy and raw materials sectors, for cash. Because of resistance to this in the State Duma, the procedure was implemented by presidential decree in July 1994. It generated even more public skepticism and resent-
ment. In 1995 the cash-strapped state offered shares in enterprises as collateral for bank loans, under rules established by the banks themselves. As expected, the state did not have the funds to repay a loan. The bank then auctioned off the shares, and generally the bank proved to be the only bidder. In this way the banks, and the oligarchs behind them, came to acquire control over large industrial empires at a fraction of their assessed value. The Communists sought to make a campaign issue of the privatization scandal in the presidential election. Several oligarchs eagerly financed Yeltsin’s 1996 reelection campaign and put their media resources at his service. To neutralize the privatization issue at the national level, Yeltsin transferred ownership of 6,000 state enterprises to the regional governments to be auctioned, with the regions keeping the proceeds. The “loans for shares” program was reinstituted after the election. The oligarchs became increasingly prominent, through their own media outlets and through their growing role as government advisers and officials, during Yeltsin’s second term. Crisis and Turnaround Six years after the beginning of economic reform, the Russian economy was still shrinking, although it was no longer in the free fall of 1992. The government was still unable to collect taxes, and many enterprises failed to pay their debts to each other. Barter had become the basis of much of economic life, with workers being paid in kind or in IOUs. Yeltsin dismissed Chernomyrdin as prime minister in the spring of 1998 and appointed a young banker, Sergei Kirienko. A new team of reformers set out to establish a long-overdue legal framework for economic activity, to impose more predictability into the system in the place of what they called the existing “unlimited semi-bandit capitalism.” They were too late. A severe financial crisis struck the Russian economy in the summer of 1998. In part, this was a reflection of the 1997 crisis in East Asia. Even more, it reflected the sudden decline in international oil prices. Oil exports had been the economy’s, and the government’s, principal revenue generator, paying for imports to cover the failure of domestic production to recover and compensating for the government’s lack of domestic tax revenues. With export revenues falling, the highly indebted government found it difficult to issue new bonds. Investors began moving their money out of Russia. The International Monetary Fund provided a loan of $17.1 billion in return for a package of reforms
to rationalize the tax code and reduce government expenditures, but this failed to stem the outflow of capital. After desperately trying to avoid either default on Russia’s foreign and domestic debt or devaluation of its currency, Kirienko, on August 17, 1998, did both. Prices skyrocketed and most oligarch banks failed, although the oligarchs themselves generally survived by shuffling their assets. Kirienko’s term in office proved brief, and he was just the first of four prime ministers during Yeltsin’s last three years as president. Unexpectedly, the crisis also proved the turning point in the country’s economic recovery. Unable to afford imports, Russia began to produce things for itself again, and production continued as international oil prices recovered. In the following year, 1999, the economy grew for the first time in the post-Soviet era; in 2000 it grew 10 percent. Chechnya I In the early years, the leaders of the new Russian Federation were worried that Russia could unravel along ethnic lines as the Soviet Union had done. They responded strongly to the one ethnic republic that did attempt to secede, Chechnya, even though that response was delayed by the general chaos prevailing in Russia in the early 1990s. The Chechens were a Muslim people of the Causcasus Mountains who, in the 19th century, had fought a prolonged war against the Russian occupation of their region. Like several other Soviet minorities they had been accused by Stalin of collaborating with the Nazis, and they were all deported to Soviet Central Asia afterward. Nikita Khrushchev allowed their return, but when the Soviet Union collapsed, the Chechens sought secession. Under Dzhokhar Dudayev, a former Soviet air force general, Chechnya declared independence in 1991. Yeltsin declared a state of emergency in Chechnya, issued a warrant for the arrest of Dudayev, and sent a detachment of Interior Ministry troops. The Chechens easily repulsed the half-hearted intervention, by ruse more than by force, and seized strategic facilities within their republic. Yeltsin ordered an economic blockade and then, given the chaotic state of Russia at the time, basically ignored the situation for the next three years. The lack of any police force facilitated smuggling and other criminal operations. In a search for outside resources and allies, the Chechens made contacts with mafias from Russia and Islamist extremists from the Middle East. Corruption spread, the economic situation grew dire, and Dudayev became more dictatorial.
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After supporting a failed attempt by a rival Chechen faction to seize power, Russia sent three armored columns into Chechnya on December 11, 1994. The Russian legislature, which had not been informed, protested vociferously. The invasion did not go smoothly. The Russians made a hasty and ill-prepared assault on Grozny, the republic’s capital, which they seized only after a month-long bombardment that killed an estimated 25,000 people and left the city a ruin. Dudayev and his fighters receded into the mountains, from where they conducted an extended guerrilla campaign. Civilian casualties continued to run high. The struggle attracted Islamist volunteers from North Africa, the Middle East, and Afghanistan. In March 1996, with presidential elections looming in Russia, Yeltsin offered to negotiate with Dudayev through an intermediary. A Russian missile killed Dudayev in April. Fighting flared again in June, and the Chechens reoccupied parts of three cities, including Grozny. A cease-fire was finally signed in August. Russian troops began to withdraw. Although the agreement left Chechnya’s permanent status to be decided, the republic proceeded to act as if it were independent. Aslan Maskhadov, the chief of staff of the Chechen armed forces and a former Soviet army colonel, was elected president of the republic in January 1997. Little rebuilding was accomplished, however, and Maskhadov was unable to establish order. In the prevailing lawlessness, kidnapping for profit became a widespread practice. In an effort to outflank the Islamists in factional infighting, he imposed Islamic law and courts. Chechnya II, Putin, and Consolidation Chechnya became the focus of attention again in 1999. Shamyl Basayev, formerly a field commander and briefly a prime minister under Maskhadov, had broken with the Chechen regime. In April 1998 he and a Jordanianborn Islamist founded the Congress of the Peoples of Chechnya and Dagestan, which proposed to unite these two adjacent ethnic republics. In August 1999 they launched a raid into Dagestan and then declared that the republic had seceded from Russia. The following month, a series of bombs exploded in apartment buildings in Moscow and other Russian cities. The act was widely attributed to the Chechens. On August 9, 1999, Yeltsin dismissed Sergei Stepashin, who had been prime minister for three months, and appointed Vladimir Putin to replace him. Putin had catapulted through a number of Kremlin staff positions to become head of internal security in July 1998. He was still generally unknown to the public when he was
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named prime minister, but he quickly became associated with the new Chechen war, which was known as Putin’s “antiterrorist operation.” Opinion polls gave Putin an approval rating of 33 percent in August, 52 percent in September, and 65 percent in October, in a land where few politicians rose above single digits. In October Russian armor was once again moving into Chechnya, without any distinction being made between the Chechen government and renegade commanders. The army performed more effectively this time. The cities were taken quickly, and a pro-Russian Chechen administration was put in place. Resistance, however, would drag on year after year in the countryside, and there would be terrorist attacks in other parts of Russia. Russian forces would respond at times with extreme brutality. With the bomb blasts fresh in people’s minds, however, this Chechen war was far more popular with the Russian public than the previous one. Four months before the legislative elections of December 1999, Yeltsin once again created a new party from scratch, Unity, a party completely dependent on the Kremlin for funding, expertise, and personnel. Putin gave it his public endorsement, and the party, too, became identified with the Chechen war effort. Unity won 23 percent of the party-list vote and 64 singlemember districts, leaving it second only to the Communist Party. In third place was Fatherland–All Russia, a coalition of personalistic parties built around prominent governors. For the first time, the State Duma had a dominant bloc of parties that were not ideological adversaries of the Kremlin. Yeltsin, within seven months of the end of his second term in office, surveyed a political landscape that suddenly appeared quite favorable. He then shocked the world by promptly resigning on December 31, 1999, and naming Putin as acting president. An early presidential election was called for March 26, 2000, which Yeltsin’s chosen successor would now approach with all the advantages of incumbency while other candidates were caught off guard. Indeed, Putin won in the first round with 52.9 percent of the vote against 10 other candidates, despite having been a virtual unknown the previous August. He promptly obliged his predecessor by issuing a blanket pardon for anything Yeltsin might have done during his years in office. As president, Putin no longer devoted himself solely to the prosecution of the war. Economic reform continued but Putin’s primary focus appeared to be order, stability, security, and consolidation of the Russian state. Russia was very much in need of order by that time, but Putin’s notion of consolidating the state reflected his
upbringing within the Soviet Union. Rather than make state institutions more effective, he set out to make all institutions dependent on the president. Putin remained a largely unknown quantity, allowing others to see in him what they wanted. Moreover he surrounded himself with two distinct sets of officials: a group of economic reformers known as the “technocrats” and a group of people tied, as he himself was, to the military, police, and internal security services. For all his talk of order and predictability, Putin allowed these officials free rein to discredit and undermine each other’s initiatives. Some measures did improve the effectiveness of the Russian state. Reforms were introduced and carried out in a more orderly fashion. The Duma no longer spent its time debating impeachment and censure bills. New requirements for the registration of a political party, including a minimum membership of 10,000, introduced some order into the chaotic party system. The tax code was reformed, instituting a 13 percent flat tax on both individuals and corporations, and it was actually enforced. This reduced nominal tax rates, but, because of previous evasion, it increased revenues. Annual budget surpluses suddenly became routine. Power was being centralized in stages. The outcome of the December 1999 election had already strengthened Putin’s position. Relations between president and legislature became more productive. In 2001 Unity and the Fatherland–All Russia bloc were merged into a new pro-Putin party, eventually named United Russia, which was clearly the largest in the State Duma. In the Federation Council, Putin replaced the elected governors and regional legislative heads with appointed representatives. Next, Putin interposed a new layer of government, grouping Russia’s 89 constituent jurisdictions into seven supraregional federal districts and placing an appointed presidential representative in charge of each. All federal employees in the regions, who had become increasingly dependent on the governors under Yeltsin, were now to answer to these representatives. Another new law then gave the president the right to remove elected governors accused of wrongdoing. Another round of centralization began in 2004. Putin declared that the threat of separatist violence required a strengthening of the state. Thus in December 2004 he signed a law abolishing the election of governors, who would now be presidential appointees. At the same time, the minimum membership of a political party was raised from 10,000 to 50,000. Another law followed in May 2005 that eliminated single-member
districts from the Duma, leaving all seats to be elected by proportional representation from party lists and raising the minimum threshold for representation from five percent of the vote to seven percent. How these measures would have helped Beslan remained unclear, but the latter was likely to end the independent existence of Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces (the successor party to Russia’s Choice), which by 2003 no longer mustered even five percent of the vote and entered the Duma only through single-member districts. Far from alienating the electorate, Putin was rewarded at the polls for his perceived efforts to impose order and the improving economic situation. In the legislative elections of December 2003, his new party, United Russia, became the first ever to win an absolute majority in the State Duma. In the presidential elections of March 2004, Putin was reelected in the first round, over five other candidates, with 71.3 percent of the vote. International election observers, however, criticized the skewed electoral coverage in the media. Putin and the Oligarchs Putin sought to distance himself from the oligarchs, who had become closely identified with the Yeltsin administration in the public mind. In some cases he went so far as to intimidate and harass them. Rumors told of a tacit deal: If the oligarchs stayed out of politics, Putin would not order the police to investigate how they had become oligarchs. Not all oligarchs abided by the deal. Putin’s first targets were Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky, both of whom had accumulated many enemies and both of whom controlled large media empires that had criticized the handling of the Chechen war. Berezovsky was well known and particularly disliked. Although he had actively supported Putin’s election, he spoke soon afterward of the need to form a new opposition party. Gusinsky had gone so far as to endorse the wrong presidential candidate in 2000. Whatever the specific reason, both ended up living in self-imposed exile and being stripped of many of their assets. In 2001 Gusinsky’s NTV, the country’s largest independent television network, was taken over by Gazprom, the gas giant. Thus, not only oligarchs but also journalists were put on warning. This was particularly true of journalists in the electronic media, and they soon learned especially not to criticize the Russian war effort in Chechnya. The unsolved murders of several investigative reporters further reinforced caution. The next assault on the oligarchs was directed against Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Yukos, Russia’s largest private oil conglomerate. Khodorkovsky was also known
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for making large contributions to opposition political parties. In 2003 he found himself under arrest on charges of tax evasion, and he was later sentenced to nine years in prison. Yukos was assessed back taxes and fees that amounted to some $27 billion. When it was unable to pay, its main production unit, Yuganskneftegaz, was taken over by Rosneft, a state-owned entity. Sibneft, an oil company that had been on the verge of merging with Yukos, instead became a part of Gazprom. Although presented as a rectification of the unethical privatization schemes of the 1990s, the Yukos affair symbolized for many observers just how random and arbitrary the use of state power had become. Putin’s technocratic advisers, with open disdain, referred to the government’s approach as “tax terrorism.” Unlike many other oligarchs, Khodorkovsky had become the model of good corporate governance in the Russian business world, recruiting experienced foreign executives to introduce Western standards of accounting and management. Even if Putin’s intention was not to renationalize large sectors of the economy, as many outsiders assumed it was, his actions ran the risk of discouraging foreign and domestic investment and of spurring new rounds of capital flight. The hypothesis that the oligarch cases really represented the criminalization of political opposition activity received reinforcement in 2005 with the Mikhail Kasyanov affair. Kasyanov was not an oligarch but rather a technocrat and former finance minister with a shady reputation. He served as prime minister throughout Putin’s first term but was dismissed in 2004 without any public explanation. The following year, Kasyanov began to issue public criticisms of the administration’s political direction. He openly hinted that he might run for president in 2008. Within weeks, the police opened an investigation into how he had acquired his country house outside Moscow, which according to television reports was worth $30 million. Question of Subversion Russia maintained generally cooperative relations with the outside world after 1991, even with such former adversaries as the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). This was true despite the fact that by the early 2000s several former East European allies and the three Baltic republics had joined NATO and the United States had established air bases in former Soviet republics in Central Asia. Below the surface, however, resentments simmered over what some Russians considered unequal treatment and Western gloating over the outcome of
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the cold war. On occasion, resentment and suspicion rose to the surface, as was the case with what Russians called the “colored revolutions.” After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Western governments and foundations had given financial support, advice, and encouragement to a variety of independent civic groups in former Soviet republics that advocated the protection of human rights, democratic reform, and similar causes. Western leaders saw the development of “civil society” as a prerequisite for the further development of democracy. Indeed, civil society in Russia had progressed tremendously since Soviet times, when all independent entities were proscribed by law. Outside Russia, such civic groups were central to the organization of massive demonstrations that protested fraudulent elections and eventually toppled authoritarian and semi-authoritarian regimes in Georgia in 2003, Ukraine in 2004, and Kyrgyzstan in 2005. In each case, the successor regime was less favorably inclined toward Russia than its predecessor. In the Ukrainian case, in particular, Putin had taken an open stance in support of the side that was toppled. Russian officials began to speak of the civic groups as instruments of subversion directed by Western intelligence agencies. Internal security officers described a conspiracy of loosely associated entities engaging in “network warfare.” In response, a law was passed in December 2005 requiring all nongovernmental organizations to register with the state and to submit regular reports on their activities and spending. The state was empowered to review compliance and to shut down any entity that violated the rules, but exactly which activities were prohibited was left vague. Perhaps more ominous was the sudden rise of a new organization, a pro-Putin youth movement called Nashi (“Ours”). Founded in March 2005, Nashi was capable of mobilizing 60,000 people for a rally in May of that year. Its leaders described the group’s purpose as preventing a coup against the Russian government. The Kremlin denied any links to the organization, but Nashi was permitted to hold its founding congress in a facility of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and its leaders were granted a personal interview with Putin. The rhetoric suggested to some observers that Nashi was being readied to replace an insufficiently reliable United Russia party as the country’s main political organization. Trends of the Future? Boris Yeltsin, in his revolution, unleashed a host of competing regional, bureaucratic, political, and economic forces. Then he attempted to rule by playing them off
against one another. The informal interplay, backroom power struggles, deals, and personal connections often proved more important than the formal institutions of government, which he had also created in an arbitrary and self-serving manner. Increasingly, however, ill health, depression, and bouts of drinking kept him from engaging the game. The system became increasingly chaotic. Putin then set out to impose order and hierarchy by subordinating institutions and privatesector groups to the presidency. On the positive side, few people believe anymore that Russia faces the threat of economic, social, or political collapse. The country under Putin is still much freer than it was as part of the Soviet Union. It is more open, and it has more human contact and a freer flow of ideas with the outside world. It is more responsive to the wishes of its citizens. There still are regular elections, and civil society survives, although it faces new threats. Real debate continues in the print media. Although it depends too heavily on favorable international oil prices, the economy continues to show signs of recovery. Putin’s efforts to impose hierarchy could simply fail. There is, in a word, hope. Nonetheless, there have been undeniable negative trends. The turmoil of the 1990s discredited the words “reform” and “democrat” in the eyes of many honest citizens. Corruption reached intolerable levels. The Soviet Union’s collapse, the loss of superpower status, the subsequent rise of poverty, and the perceived mistreatment at the hands of other powers left a reservoir of resentment and latent hostility that may be looking for an outlet. The brutal war in Chechnya gives little cause for satisfaction with either side, even when the Russians say it is part of the common fight against terrorism. Even the nature of Russia’s more competitive manufactured exports may give some cause for concern. The stifling of the electronic media, the virtual renationalization of certain large enterprises, the abolishing of gubernatorial elections, and the concentration of power in the hands of the president all give an insight into the fragility of some of the country’s most important achievements. The government, moreover, has shown a disturbing willingness to criminalize political opposition. Even if these actions are supposed to be temporary, or are simply intended to rein in the excesses of a chaotic time and reestablish order, there is still a risk that they could go too far. Putin’s administration was initially associated with economic recovery, but the perceived assault on private property, the partial reinsertion of the state into the economy, and the simultaneous rigidification of the state could easily stifle investment,
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encourage capital flight, generate bottlenecks, and otherwise induce economic erosion in the longer run. It is, of course, too soon to draw any serious conclusions about the history of the Russian Federation since 1991. Which trends finally emerge as dominant will have long-lasting consequences for the future of Russia and perhaps the rest of the world as well. See also Soviet Union, dissolution of the. Further reading: Billington, James H. Russia in Search of Itself. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2004; Herspring, Dale R., ed. Putin’s Russia: Past Imperfect, Future Uncertain. 2d ed. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005; Jack, Andrew. Inside Putin’s Russia. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004; Ross, Cameron, ed. Russian Politics Under Putin. New York: Manchester University Press, 2004; Shevtsova, Lilia. Putin’s Russia. 2d ed. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005. Scott C. Monje
Rwanda/Burundi conflict Rwanda and Burundi were, until World War I, occupied by the Germans, being a part of German East Africa. Captured by the Allied armed forces, they were administered as Ruanda-Urundi by Belgium under League of Nations trusteeship and, from 1945, under United Nations (UN) trusteeship. The entity was split in 1959 into Burundi and Rwanda, and on July 1, 1962, the two countries became independent with the formation of the Kingdom of Burundi and the Republic of Rwanda. Both faced regular ethnic problems centering on the Tutsi-Hutu rivalry, with the Hutu forming 85 percent of the population of each country and the Tutsi being a much better educated minority. In the year before Burundi became independent, there was political trouble that followed the UNsupervised elections of September 1961 that saw the Parti de l’Unité et Progrès National winning but their leader, Prince Louis Rwagsore, being assassinated several weeks later. There was more instability when two prime ministers, Pierre Ngendandumwe and Joseph Bamina, were assassinated before an attempted coup d’état took place in October 1965. Thousands were killed as the government sought to maintain its power. However, it gave too much power to the army, which, in November 1966, overthrew the monarchy and established a republic under President Michel Micombero.
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The last former king, Ntare V. Ndizeye, staged a coup attempt in 1972 but was killed in the attempt, which was immediately blamed on the Hutu—the government being drawn from the Tutsi minority. As the Tutsi government sought revenge on its opponents, some 100,000 Hutu were massacred. In 1976 Micombero was overthrown in a military coup, and the new president, Jean-Baptiste Bagaza, tried to moderate the government and introduce reforms that stopped the oppression of the Hutu. However, Bagaza was overthrown in 1987 in a coup d’état organized by Major Pierre Buyoya, who suspended the 1981 constitution and dissolved opposition parties. In August 1988 some 20,000 Hutu were massacred by the government, and many Hutu refugees fled to Rwanda. In Rwanda, the monarchy was removed in 1959, before independence, and at independence, in 1962, the Hutu-led Parti du Mouvement de l’Emancipation Hutu—led by Grégoire Kayibanda—came to power. There were massacres of some 20,000 Tutsi, and in 1973 Kayibanda was overthrown by General Juvénal Habyarimana, a former defense minister, who became president. He formed the Mouvement Révolutionnaire National pour le Développement. It was not until 1978 that the constitution was restored; Habyarimana was relected in 1983 and again in January 1989. It was the 1988 ethnic tensions in Burundi that sent large numbers of Hutu refugees from Burundi across the RwandaBurundi border. Many Tutsis also settled in Uganda, where they became Anglophiles, in contrast with the Rwandan and Burundi governments, which maintained connections with France. Fighting in both countries came to a brief halt, and in April 1994, when negotiations to end the fighting were starting to make progress, the plane carrying Habyarimana back to Kigali, the Rwandan capital, was shot down with a French missile. All on board, including President Ntaryamira of Burundi, were killed. This was the opportunity that the extreme Rwandan Hutus were eagerly awaiting to try to take over control of Rwanda. It is not known for certain who shot down the plane, but the Hutu government of Rwanda blamed the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF)—Tutsi rebels who were based in Uganda—while the RPF blamed the hard-liners in the government who did not want to share power. The killing of the president gave the extreme Hutus an excuse to unleash their Interahamwe militia on the Tutsis and moderate Hutus, killing up to 900,000 of them in horrific massacres. Several UN solders were killed while protecting moderate politicians in Kigali, and the remainder of the UN forces was evacuated from
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the country. The UN Security Council—Rwanda was a member at the time—did nothing to try to stop the genocide, which only ended as the RPF forces won the civil war, capturing Kigali soon afterward. The RPF inherited a devastated country and did their best to arrest the perpetrators of the genocide but hundreds of thousands of Hutus—extremists and their supporters—fled into the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo. Since the coming to power of the government of President Paul Kagame in Rwanda, there has been a concerted effort to rebuild the country shattered by ethnic tensions, war, and genocide. With a large number of the intelligentsia of the country murdered or in exile overseas, Kagame has managed gradually to rebuild the infrastructure of the country and at the same time prosecute those guilty of horrendous atrocities. The United Nations Security Council did adopt Resolution 977 in February 1995, setting up the International Criminal Tribunal based in Tanzania. The Kagame government has objected to it because it has refused to sanction the death penalty even for the most heinous of crimes. Some of those caught in Rwanda, in some cases having been found guilty of murdering
hundreds of people with machetes, have been tried and executed, with others jailed. In spite of the tensions and hatreds engendered by the war, the civil society is gradually being improved in Rwanda, with conditions also improving in Burundi. Prior to the recent civil war, many tourists had visited Rwanda to see the mountain gorillas. These numbers had increased following the film Gorillas in the Mist (1988) about Dian Fossey who lived with the gorillas and nurtured many of them, especially one known as “Digit.” After the war it was revealed that most of the gorillas survived, and some tourist groups are, once again, visiting Rwanda. Further reading: Mamdani, Mahmood. When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide In Rwanda. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001; Omaar, Rakiya, and Alex de Waal. Rwanda: Death, Despair and Defiance. London: African Rights, 1995; Twagilimana, Aimable. The Debris of Ham: Ethnicity, Regionalism, and the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2003. Justin Corfield
S Sahel, ecological crisis in The Sahel region is the semi-arid part of western and north-central Africa that is located between the Sahara in the north, and the humid savannah of the south— much of it being in what was formerly French West Africa. It covers the region from the Atlantic Ocean, covering northern Senegal, southern Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta), southern Niger, northeastern Nigeria, south-central Chad, and through to the Sudan. Some descriptions have it including a small part of southwestern Morocco (formerly Western Sahara), and going through to Eritrea. In the second part of the 20th century, with a large increase in the population of the Sahel, there has been massive soil erosion and desertification. Much tree and scrub cover has been removed to allow for the collection of firewood and for the creation of more farmland. Subsequent rainstorms have taken away much of the topsoil, destroying the fertility of the land and turning much of it into wasteland. Overgrazing has continued to make the situation worse, accentuated by bad land management. This in turn has led to the expansion of the Sahara in spite of a number of attempts to prevent this. A bad drought in 1968 led to the destruction of many of the crops grown in the Sahel, and, with more years of drought in the early 1970s, the problems became worse. In 1972 the entire Sahel received almost no rain, and in the following year the Sahara
started increasing up to 60 miles (100 km) a day in the south. Some 100,000 people died from starvation and related diseases in 1973, and, although international relief aid managed to help, severe drought and famine hit the Sahel again in the period 1983–85. In recent years, as the situation has become far worse, it has been associated with global warming and greenhouse gases, although direct human activity is certainly to blame. The situation was so bad that in 1973 the United Nations Sahelian Office (UNSO) was created to try to address the problems facing the Sahel. The International Fund for Agricultural Development was founded in 1977 to deal with this and similar environmental problems; in the 1990s the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) was adopted. Although the UNCCD has managed to make progress, the ecological crisis has exacerbated many tribal and other tensions in the region, such as in Darfur. Further reading: Bonan, Gordon B. Ecological Climatology: Concepts and Applications. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002; Hill, Allan G., ed. Population, Health and Nutrition in the Sahel: Issues in the Welfare of Selected West African communities. London: KPI, 1985; Raynaut, Claude, and Emmanuel Gregoire. Societies and Nature in the Sahel. London & New York: Routledge, 1997; Salgado, Sebastiao. Sahel: the End of the Road. Berkeley, University of California Press, 2004. Justin Corfield
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San Francisco, treaty of The Treaty of San Francisco, signed on November 8, 1951, and implemented on April 28, 1952, restored full sovereignty to Japan after its unconditional surrender at the end of World War II and ended the U.S. occupation. The negotiations over the treaty revealed differing notions of what had caused World War II and of what Japan’s role in the world should be. Engineered primarily by the United States, the treaty quickly became caught up in the cold war rivalries. In March 1947 U.S. general Douglas MacArthur, who headed the Allied Occupation Authority in Japan, ignited a heated debate about the proper terms of Japan’s rehabilitation when he publicly stated his preference for a relatively short U.S. occupation, believing that Japan had been democratized and demilitarized and that a long occupation would only create resentment. This view was countered by those who pushed for massive reparations from Japan as well as its complete demilitarization. This group believed that the lax enforcement of the Versailles Treaty, which had ended World War I and established terms for the German reparations and demilitarization, had created the conditions for World War II. A different assessment of the Versailles Treaty emerged among those who advocated a “soft” approach to the peace treaty. This group, which eventually included U.S. secretary of state Dean Acheson as well as MacArthur, argued that it was the harsh conditions of Versailles that had, by humiliating and isolating Germany, contributed to the rise of Nazism. This group also worried that the United States should be careful not to overextend its military presence in Japan. The negotiations were complicated by cold war diplomacy. The United States worried about granting Soviet Russia and the newly established communist People’s Republic of China a significant role. It also wanted to guarantee that Japan would become a U.S.friendly bulwark against communism in East Asia. In particular, the U.S. military wanted to retain control over Japan for an extended period to guarantee access to its military bases in the area. The United States eventually adopted a “piecemeal strategy” of granting Japan full sovereignty and disregarding the calls for a longer occupation. It met the concerns of the British Commonwealth of Nations with a U.S.-backed security network that would include Australia and New Zealand. It satisfied the
concerns of the Philippines with promises of aid and security. The United States also decided that neither the Chinese Communist nor the Chinese Nationalist governments would be invited to the treaty conference. This formula won significant bipartisan support in the United States. The official treaty conference took place in San Francisco in 1951. Fifty-one nations were represented (India chose not to attend). The United States engineered the final result, causing delegates from the Soviet Union, Poland, and Czechoslovakia to walk out. Eventually 48 nations signed the treaty. The final terms of the treaty reflected a victory for the pragmatists who had worried that overly harsh conditions would push Japan away from the West. Although it stripped Japan of all territory gained since 1895 and rejected the pardoning of war criminals, the treaty established immediate sovereignty for Japan and limited reparations it owed to its World War II victim nations. The United States–Japan Security Treaty, signed two hours after the peace treaty, guaranteed a U.S. military presence. Not all Japanese were happy with the treaty. Many Japanese wanted to see the process of democratization and demilitarization continued. They were surprised by the number of bases the United States maintained in Japan as well as the ban on diplomatic relations and trade with communist China. In retrospect, the relatively generous terms of the treaty reformed Japan as an important member of the Western camp during the cold war. Japan never again threatened the security interests of the West or of other East Asian nations. Further reading: Dower, John. Embracing Defeat. New York: Norton, 1999; McCormick, Thomas. America’s Half- Century: United States Foreign Policy in the Cold War and After. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. Thomas Robertson
Sandinista National Liberation Front The Sandinista National Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nactional, or FSLN, or Sandinistas) was a neo-Marxist politico-military organization founded in 1961–62 by a small group of Nicaraguan revolutionaries inspired by the example of the Cuban revolution. Its goals were to overthrow the Somoza dictatorship and establish a nationalist, socialist, dem-
ocratic, internationally nonaligned revolutionary state. As such, it was but one of several dozen revolutionary groups to emerge in Latin America in the 1950s and 1960s, and remained relatively obscure until the late 1970s. On July 19, 1979, it became one of only two revolutionary organizations in modern Latin American history to seize state power after a prolonged armed conflict (the other was Fidel Castro’s 26th of July Movement). It ruled Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990, when it was voted out of office, after which it became a minority party in a series of coalition governments. In 2006 a reconstituted FSLN captured the presidency with the election of longtime Sandinista leader and former president Daniel Ortega. The group was named after Nicaraguan rebel leader Augusto C. Sandino (1895–1934) at the insistence of FSLN leader Carlos Fonesca Amador, who envisioned blending the group’s neo-Marxism with the country’s homegrown traditions of popular struggle, and interpreted Sandino as “a kind of path” and a potent symbol by which to more effectively generate popular support. In addition to Fonseca, FSLN founders included Tomás Borge Martínez, Noel Guerrero Santiago, Pedro Pablo Ríos, Bayardo Altamirano, Silvio Mayorga, Iván Sánchez, and Faustino Ruiz. Of this group only Borge survived to witness the revolution’s triumph; after 1979 he became Interior Minister. Other early members included Germán Pomares and Santos López, the latter the only early FSLN member who had fought in Sandino’s army (1927–34). In the 1960s and 1970s the movement went through several phases and was shaped by a complex sequence of events. In general, the organization shifted its emphasis from the military to the political realm (gaining the political sympathies of the populace), and from organizing rural folk (campesinos) to organizing students, workers, and the urban poor. Among the most significant events marking the early history of the movement were the 1963 Coco River and Bocay campaign and the 1967 Pancasán offensive in the mountains near Matagalpa, the latter nearly destroying the group and, coming the same year as Che Guevara’s capture and execution in Bolivia, compelled a strategic rethinking. Thereafter, most organizing efforts shifted to urban areas. The aftermath of the December 23, 1972, Managua earthquake, which killed some 10,000 people, left 250,000 homeless, and exposed the corruption of the Somoza regime, enhanced the stature of the FSLN and other dissident groups. In December 1974, in an audacious raid on the home of wealthy businessman Chema Castillo, the group captured and ransomed for
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$1 million several high-ranking officials and forced the release from prison of 14 Sandinista leaders. In retaliation, from 1975 the Somoza regime arrested and killed many Sandinistas, including Carlos Fonseca in 1976. In the late 1970s the group fractured into three main “tendencies”: the “Prolonged People’s War” faction (led by Tomás Borge, Henry Ruiz, and Bayardo Arce); the “Proletarian Tendency” (led by Jaime Wheelock, Luis Carrion, and Carlos Nuñez); and the “Insurrectional Tendency,” or “Third Way” (led by Daniel Ortega, his brother Humberto Ortega, and Victor Tirado López). In 1978–79 a series of insurrections in Managua, León, Estelí, and other cities, led by the Insurrectional Tendency, spelled the demise of the Somoza regime. After July 1979 these three factions were reunited in the nine-member National Directorate, which exercised de facto political power during the years of Sandinista rule. Further Reading: Booth, John A. The End and the Beginning: The Nicaraguan Revolution. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1982; Cabezas, Omar. Fire From the Mountain: The Making of a Sandinista. Translated by Kathleen Weaver. New York: Plume, 1985; Marcus, Bruce, ed. Sandinistas Speak. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1985. Michael J. Schroeder
Saudi Arabia The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the largest Arab country on the Arabian Peninsula. Bordering Jordan, Iraq, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Yemen, Saudi Arabia has played an important strategic role in the Middle East. Islam’s two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina, are located in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is divided into 13 provinces, and, until the 1960s, most of the population was nomadic. Most Saudis are ethnically Arab, although some are of mixed ethnic origins. Many Arabs from neighboring countries work and live in Saudi Arabia but are not citizens. Of a population numbering approximately 26 million, 7 million are foreign citizens, mostly from South Asia. There are also a significant number of Westerners living in Saudi Arabia. All citizens are required to be Muslims. Saudi Arabia is a monarchy ruled by King Abdullah bin Abd al-Aziz al-Saud, who assumed the throne upon the death of his half brother Fahd bin Abd alAziz al-Saud in 2005. The 1992 Basic Law established the system of government and the rights of citizens and
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Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates (left) attends a meeting with King Abdullah bin Abdul al-Saud in 2006.
provided for rule according to sharia, which is Islamic law. The Qu’ran is the constitution of the land, and there is no separation of church and state. The country held its first municipal elections in 2005. The king is an absolute monarch whose powers are tempered only by the sharia and other Saudi traditions. The king consults with the Majlis al-Shura, or Consultative Council; the Council of Ministers; the ulema (religious leaders); and other senior members of the Saudi royal family. The Council of Ministers approves legislation, which must be compatible with sharia. While the Basic Law provides for an independent judiciary, the king serves as the highest court. The Saudi judicial system imposes amputations of hands and feet for serious robbery, floggings for lesser crimes such as sexual deviance and drunkenness, and beheadings for more serious crimes. Religious police enforce strict social rules. The Saudi economy is based on petroleum and gas resources, and the government controls most of the revenues. Approximately 40 percent of the economy is privatized. Saudi Arabia contains nearly 25 percent of the world’s oil reserves and is the largest exporter of petroleum in the world. Saudi Arabia has also played a central role in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Oil production increased during the reign of King Faisal ibn Abd al-Aziz; Faisal became king following the abdication of his inept half brother King Saud ibn Abd al-Aziz. He introduced various reforms and attempted to modernize the kingdom. With the support of his wife, Queen Iffat, Faisal introduced educa-
tion for females. A devout Muslim, Faisal also worked to increase the Islamic political identity in the Arab world. After the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Saudi Arabia’s strategic importance increased, and Faisal built up the nation’s military capabilities. During the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, Faisal moved to mix oil and politics by withdrawing Saudi oil from nations that supported Israel. He also advocated the return of Jerusalem to Muslim rule. In 1975 Faisal was assassinated by a nephew, and his half brother, King Khaled ibn Abd al-Aziz, known for his pro–United States stance, assumed the throne. Following his death in 1982, Fahd ibn Abd al-Aziz became king. The Saudi government supported the growth of the private sector to decrease economic dependence on oil and to increase employment opportunities. In the 1990s, water shortages hampered efforts toward agricultural self-sufficiency and the per capita income decreased from almost $25,000 in the 1980s to about $8,000 by 2000. In order to increase employment for its citizens, the government attempted to Saudize the economy by replacing foreign labor with Saudi workers. Counterterrorism efforts dominated Saudi politics in the early 21st century. After 15 Saudi hijackers perpetrated the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, the Saudi government intensified its antiterrorism campaign. However, the future of the authoritarian monarchy remained uncertain as the Saudi government attempted to combine sweeping programs of modernization with the continuation of traditional and puritanical ways of life. See also terrorism. Further reading: Mackey, Sandra. The Saudis: Inside the Desert Kingdom, updated ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2002; Lippman, Thomas W. Inside the Mirage: America’s Fragile Partnership with Saudi Arabia. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2004; Vassiliev, Alexei. The History of Saudi Arabia. New York: New York University Press, 2000. Julie Eadeh
School of the Americas The School of the Americas—called by its critics the “School of the Assassins”—was founded by the United States in 1946 in Fort Gulick, Panama, as the Latin American Ground School (LAGS). In 1949 it was renamed the U.S. Army Caribbean School-Spanish Instruction and in 1963 the U.S. Army School of the
Americas (SOA). In 2001, largely in response to years of protests by human rights organizations, the U.S. Congress renamed it the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC) and relocated it to Fort Benning, Georgia. Despite these formal changes in its name, the School of the Americas has remained consistent in its core mission: to provide U.S. Army-directed, Spanish-language military training to Latin American militaries. Since its founding, the SOA has trained an estimated 60,000 soldiers in counterinsurgency warfare; interrogation techniques; commando and psychological warfare; sniping; military intelligence; civil-military relations; and related courses of study. According to a June 1996 report issued by a fourperson independent Intelligence Oversight Board (IOB) appointed by U.S. President Bill Clinton, the SOA “used improper instruction materials in training Latin American officers from 1982 to 1991 [that] condone practices such as execution of guerrillas, extortion, physical abuse, coercion, and false imprisonment.” The findings echoed the criticisms of human rights organizations that include America’s Watch and Amnesty International, and of the United Nations Truth Commission Report on El Salvador (1993), which found that many of the most egregious violators of human rights in El Salvador’s 12-year civil war were graduates of the SOA. Their crimes included the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero (1980); the El Mozote Massacre (1980, in which more than 900 civilians were killed); and scores of other massacres in El Salvador. In 2002 the Center for Justice and Accountability won a $54.6 million lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Florida against two former Salvadoran generals and SOA graduates (General Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, Director-General of the Salvadoran National Guard, 1979–83, and General José Guillermo Garcia, Minister of Defense, 1979–83) for their role in a series of human rights abuses in El Salvador in the 1980s. The organization “School of the Americas Watch” (SOA Watch), awarded the 2004 International Alfonso Comín Award for its promotion of peace and justice in the Americas, has compiled data linking SOA graduates to tortures, murders, massacres, and other human rights abuses in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay. SOA Watch’s list of “notorious graduates” includes Manuel Noriega (Panama), Efraín Ríos Montt (Guatemala), Roberto D’Aubuisson (El Salvador), and scores of others. WHISC acknowledges that some SOA graduates have
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committed human rights abuses, while maintaining that “[the] purpose of the Institute is to provide professional education and training to eligible personnel of nations of the Western Hemisphere within the context of the democratic principles set forth in the Charter of the Organization of American States . . . while fostering mutual knowledge, transparency, confidence, and cooperation among the participating nations and promoting democratic values, respect for human rights, and knowledge and understanding of United States customs and traditions.” In 2007 WHISC’s operating budget was $7.5 million. See also El Salvador, revolution and civil war in (1970s–1990s) Further reading: Gill, Lesley. The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004; SOA Watch website: www.soaw.org; WHISC website: www.benning.army. mil/whinsec/index.asp. Michael J. Schroeder
Shanghai Communiqué A Joint Communiqué was issued in Shanghai on February 27, 1972, by the United States and China on the occasion of President Richard. Nixon’s visit to the People’s Republic of China. The Shanghai Communiqué would officially break the cycle of antagonism between the two countries and would be the instrument on which their new relationship would be built. The communiqué is also important because it allowed the two sides to embrace friendly relations while deferring the contentious issue of the status of Taiwan. The first steps toward reconciliation were taken in 1969 when the United States relaxed certain trade and travel restrictions to China. By 1970 the two sides had reopened informal talks in Warsaw. In April of 1971 Chinese officials invited the U.S. table tennis team to Beijing, resulting in a well-publicized visit and a warm welcome by the Chinese government. By June of 1971 President Nixon had revoked the 21-year trade embargo with China. On July 9 of the same year, U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger secretly visited Beijing in order to lay the foundation for President Nixon’s trip and to take steps toward the normalization of relations between the two countries. On July 15, 1971, Nixon shocked the world by announcing that he would visit
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China to seek the normalization of relations between the two nations. From February 21 to February 28, 1972, Nixon visited China, meeting with Chinese leaders including the chairman of the Communist Party Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung). Toward the end of the trip, the two sides announced the Shanghai Communiqué, which was the product of months of intensive negotiations. The communiqué announced that progress toward the normalization of relations between China and the United States was in the interests of all countries. It stated that both sides wished to reduce the danger of international military conflict and that neither should seek “hegemony” in the Asia-Pacific region. It also asserted that each was opposed to efforts by any other country or group of countries to establish such hegemony. On the issue of Taiwan, both sides outlined their respective positions. The Chinese stated that the government of the People’s Republic of China was the “sole legal government of China” and that Taiwan was a province of China. The Chinese further argued that all U.S. forces and military installations must be withdrawn from Taiwan. The United States declared that the U.S. government would not challenge that position. The United States also expressed its hope for peaceful settlement of the “Taiwan question.” The United States further affirmed its ultimate objective as the withdrawal of all U.S. forces and military installations from Taiwan. In the meantime, the United States pledged to reduce its forces and military installations on Taiwan. The two sides agreed to the expansion of cultural, technological, and commercial contacts to complement the normalization of diplomatic relations. Both expressed their hope that the gains achieved during Nixon’s visit would open up new prospects between the two countries and would contribute to the relaxation of tensions in Asia and the world. President Nixon would refer to his visit to China as the week that “changed the world.” His visit reflected China’s alignment with the West against the Soviet Union and resulted in a fundamental change in the global balance of power. The United States no longer had to prepare for war against China and could focus its resources against the Soviet Union. Better relations would have benefits for the People’s Republic of China as well. They allowed China an ally in a potential confrontation with the Soviet Union. The format of the communiqué allowed China to claim an equal footing with the United States in the world, something it had long sought. Mao would hail the visit as a “great diplomatic victory” for China.
Despite this progress, U.S. support for Taiwan would prevent the establishment of formal U.S.Chinese diplomatic relations for several years. On January 1, 1979, the United States would finally establish normal diplomatic relations with China, removing its troops from Taiwan and abrogating the U.S.-Taiwan Defense Treaty. Despite opposition from Chinese officials, the United States continued to maintain the right to sell defensive weapons to Taiwan. Further reading: Chen Jian. Mao’s China and the Cold War. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001; Mann, James. About Face: A History of America’s Curious Relationship with China, from Nixon to Clinton. New York: Vintage Books, 2000; Nathan, Andrew J., and Robert S. Ross. The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress: China’s Search for Security. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997; Tyler, Patrick. A Great Wall: Six Presidents and China: An Investigative History. New York: Public Affairs, 1999. Michael A. Ridge Jr.
Shastri, Lal Bahadur
(1904–1966) Indian prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indian prime minister at the time of the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, was born on October 2, 1901, at Mughalsarai, Uttar Pradesh. Shastri graduated from Kashi Vidya Peeth in Varanasi in 1926, attaining the degree of shastri (equivalent to a bachelor’s degree). His surname, Shastri, was taken by him from this degree. He was attracted to the freedom movement while at school and participated in the noncooperation and civil disobedience movements launched by Mohandas K. Gandhi. After India’s independence Shastri became the home minister of Uttar Pradesh state. He then joined politics on the national level, became the general secretary of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) in 1951, under Jawaharlal Nehru as president, and became a close confidant of Nehru. Shastri was a humble man and tolerant of opposing viewpoints, but never wavered from his convictions. He resigned as railway minister after an accident near Ariyalur, Tamil Nadu, taking responsibility for the event. Shastri was a very capable organizer of the Congress Party and contributed to the success of his party in general elections. After Nehru’s death on May 27, 1964, party stalwarts favored the noncontroversial Shastri as his successor as
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prime minister. As prime minister, he tried to solve the rising problem of food shortage in the country and worked to ameliorate the condition of the peasantry. Shastri showed strong determination and iron will in his dealings with Pakistan. These had been bad since independence. But the second Indo-Pakistani Wars began during Shastri’s premiership. India had been humiliated in the Sino-Indian War of 1962, and Pakistan exploited the situation by fomenting trouble on the western border of India. Shastri made diplomatic efforts to solve the problem but failed. The conflict began in the Rann of Kutch region in Gujarat in March 1965 when Pakistani infiltrators entered Kashmir. The war was a stalemate. The United Nations Security Council called for a cease-fire on September 22. Then a meeting of the premiers of India and Pakistan, arranged by Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin, took place in the city of Tashkent. The Tashkent Agreement was signed by Shastri and Pakistani president Ayub Khan on January 10, 1966. It restored normal relations between India and Pakistan. Both armies went back to the positions they had held before the war, and the cease-fire line became the de facto border between the two countries. Shastri suffered a heart attack and died the next day. A grateful nation awarded him with the highest honor, Bharat Ratna, posthumously. Shastri had left an indelible mark in Indian politics because of his leadership quality, honesty, and steadfast determination. Further reading: Gauhar, Altaf. Ayub Khan, Pakistan’s First Military Ruler. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1996; Mankekar, D. R. Lal Bahadur Shastri. Mumbai: Popular Prakashan, 1973; Singh, L. P. India’s Foreign Policy: The Shastri Period. New Delhi: Uppal Publishing House, 1980; Singh, L. P. Portrait of Lal Bahadur Shastri: A Quintessential Gandhian. New Delhi: Ravi Dayal Publishers, 1996; Srivasatava, C. P. Lal Bahadur Shastri: Prime Minister of India 9th June 1964–11 January 1966, A Life of Truth in Politics. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995. Patit Paban Mishra
Shining Path Founded in the 1960s but not active in guerrilla activities until May 1980, the Maoist-oriented Communist Party of Peru (Partido Comunista del Perú), popularly known as the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso), was the brainchild of former university professor Abimael Guzmán.
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For 12 years, from 1980 until Guzmán’s capture by the Peruvian military on September 12, 1992, in Lima, Shining Path waged a rural and urban guerrilla campaign against the Peruvian state. Based mainly in rural areas, Shining Path controlled sections in the south and central part of the highlands, and had taken their struggle to the shantytowns of Lima and other cities. The insurgency prompted a security crackdown by three successive presidents in which the Peruvian military committed tens of thousands of documented human rights abuses. The Shining Path movement provided President Fujimori with a pretext for his “self-coup” of April 1992, when he dissolved the Peruvian Congress and suspended constitutional guarantees, soon followed by a purge of the judiciary and his assumption of dictatorial powers. The Shining Path movement, in conjunction with the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Amaru, MRTA)—and the state repression that these guerrilla movements engendered—had the effect of heightening the militarization of the country and creating a legacy of violence and impunity that endured into the 21st century. The ideology inspiring Shining Path’s guerrilla movement was an amalgam of various strains of leftist and Marxist theories of imperialism, capitalism, and armed struggle that gave primacy to the political thought of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong. Senderistas (as members of the group were known) rejected the concept of “human rights.” In keeping with this ideology, Shining Path’s principal weapon was its use of terror and violence against civilians it identified as its enemies. Alienating large sectors of the peasantry, not only by its brutality but by its lack of respect for indigenous and rural customs, the group also tried to outlaw alcohol, ban community celebrations, and close markets in city and countryside, with the aim of starving Lima and ultimately seizing state power. Many peasant communities responded by forming rondas, or community patrols, to defend themselves against Sendero assaults. The group survived its leader’s 1992 capture, though its activities dropped off markedly, and it no longer posed a threat to the state. According to the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation of Peru, in the final two decades of the 20th century a total of 69,280 civilians were killed or disappeared by Shining Path, the MRTA, paramilitary squads, and the Peruvian military, with the Shining Path responsible for more than half (54 percent) of the total. Further reading: Stern, Steve J., ed. Shining and Other Paths: War and Society in Peru, 1980–1995. Durham, NC: Duke
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University Press, 1998; Taylor, Lewis. Shining Path: Guerrilla War in Peru’s Northern Highlands, 1980–1997. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006. Michael J. Schroeder
Silva, Luiz Inácio Lula da (1945– ) Brazilian president
A former shoeshine boy, street vendor, metalworker, and longtime labor leader, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (universally known as “Lula”) was elected president of Brazil in 2002 with some 61 percent of the popular vote; four years later, despite an unfolding corruption scandal, he was reelected for a second term. His rise to political power represented a key element in a broader shift in Latin American politics in the 1990s and 2000s toward a pragmatic and democratic left-populism that viewed the neoliberal economic policies espoused by the United States and international financial institutions (particularly the International Monetary Fund and World Bank) as antithetical to the interests of their nations’ citizens and of Latin America’s and the world’s poor. Along with Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Néstor Kirchner in Argentina, Evo Morales in Bolivia, and other political leaders swept into office in the post– cold war era, President Lula has worked to deepen democratic institutions and improve the living standards of the majority, while at the same time working within the structures of global capitalism dominated by the more advanced industrial countries of Europe and North America. Born in October 1945 to a poor peasant family in the state of Pernambuco in Brazil’s impoverished northeast, as a small child Lula moved with his mother and seven siblings to the coastal city of Guarujá in São Paulo state. Like many poor working-class children, he received a spotty education, instead working in the city’s informal economy to help his family make ends meet. When he was 11, his family moved to São Paulo, where he worked in a number of factories, including a copper processing facility and an automobile plant. As a young man he became increasingly involved in union politics; this was during the period of military dictatorship (1964–85), when state authorities violently suppressed militant labor activism. Lula’s involvement in the labor movement deepened through the 1970s and 1980s. In 1978, following an AFL-CIO-sponsored tour of the United States earlier in the decade, he was elected president of a local steel-
worker’s union. After being arrested and jailed for illegal union and strike activities, in 1980 he helped found the Worker’s Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, or PT); three years later he was a founding member of the Central Worker’s Union (Central Única dos Trabalhadores, or CUT). In 1982, in the midst of these union and political activities, and with the country still in the grip of military dictatorship, he ran for office in the São Paulo state assembly. He was defeated, but four years later, following the democratic opening after 1985, won a seat in the National Congress as a Worker’s Party member. Using his congressional seat as a platform, he ran for president in 1989, losing the election but gaining national attention for his plainspoken left-populism. He ran again in 1994 and 1998 and, after softening his party’s platform to ease the jitters of the investment and financial sectors, captured the presidency in 2002. His administration’s policies can be described as moderately left-reformist, with an expansion of public sector spending in health care, education, social security, energy, and related arenas, coupled with careful debt and monetary management. The response of the international financial community, and of the Brazilian electorate, has been mostly positive, though many of his erstwhile supporters have expressed disappointment at what they see as excessive compromise and dilution of his socialist vision. Whether his administration will be able to maintain the delicate balance between meeting the needs and aspirations of transnational capital and of the country’s laboring classes remains to be seen. Further reading: Branford, Sue, and Bernardo Kucinski. Brazil, Carnival of the Oppressed: Lula and the Brazilian Worker’s Party. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1995; Petras, James, and Henry Veltmeyer. Social Movements and State Power: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador. London: Pluto Press, 2005. Michael J. Schroeder
Singapore Singapore became in independent country on August 9, 1965. This island nation at the southern tip of western Malaysia has since become a regional powerhouse. Singapore’s 4 million citizens, by marked contrast with many other countries of Southeast Asia, enjoy a high standard of living second only to Japan’s in Asia. Singapore has ancient beginnings. It was part of the Sultanate of Johore until 1819, when Sir Thomas
Stamford Raffles, representing Great Britain, made a treaty with the sultan and established the island as a British trading settlement. The name Singapore comes from the word Singapura, meaning “Lion City.” As a Crown Colony of the British Empire, it became an impregnable fortress. In 1941 Japan entered World War II, simultaneously attacking Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, and Malaysia. By early 1942 the Japanese army was progressing rapidly down the peninsula. The city was shelled and bombed, and several thousand troops and civilians were killed in the fighting. The garrison on Singapore surrendered on February 15, 1942. Thousands of Allied troops were marched into captivity. The Japanese found themselves in possession of a valuable stronghold and significant quantities of Allied weapons and ammunition. Japan established an infamous prisoner of war camp at Changi, where Allied prisoners languished under inhumane conditions. After World War II Singapore resumed its busy trading focus, and in 1959 it became a self-governing Crown Colony with Lee Kuan Yew, a British-educated barrister, as its first prime minister. On September 2, 1962, a referendum was held on whether to form a union with Malaya. Seventy-three percent of the electorate voted in favor. On September 16, 1963, Singapore became part of the new nation of Malaysia, a selfgoverning dominion of the British Commonwealth. Four areas were combined to make up Malaysia: the Federated Malay States, Singapore, British North Borneo, and Sarawak. Indonesia and the Philippines opposed the union, and Indonesia supported rebels in Malaysia after its formation. In 1965 Singapore left the Malaysia Federation to become a sovereign country. The island section of Malaysia was expelled over the status of ethnic Malay and Chinese in the population. Singapore, as a separate nation, was a success. On September 21, 1965, it became the 117th member of the United Nations. President Lee Kuan Yew is regarded as the father of modern Singapore. As leader and founder of the People’s Action Party (PAP), he campaigned energetically to form a multiracial government along nonracial lines. He maintained law and order and emphasized hard work. The government is famous for efficiency, and its people for being hardworking and forward looking. In August 1967 Singapore joined Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Thailand to form ASEAN—the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The association pursued aims of accelerating economic growth, social progress, and cultural
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development, and the promotion of peace and stability in the region. In 1971 Britain ended its military association with Singapore with the closure of the British Far East Command. Lee retired in 1990 as Singapore’s reputation for efficiency and hard work grew. Today, the nation-state is crowded—population density in 2003 was just over 6,000 people per square kilometer. Life expectancy is 77 years for males and 81 for females. Singapore has become the success story of Southeast Asia. Further reading: ASEAN website, http://www.aseansec. org/64.htm (cited February 2006); The Australian (various editions, August 1965); CIA World Factbook Web site, http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/sn.html (cited February 2006); Elphick, Peter. Singapore: The Pregnable Fortress. London: Coronet, 1995; Singapore Yearbook 2004. Singapore: Ministry of Information, 2004; The Sydney Morning Herald (various editions, September 1963). Thomas A Lewis
Singh, Manmohan
(1932– ) Indian prime minister India’s 14th prime minister since independence in 1947, Manmohan Singh was born on September 26, 1932, in the Punjab before the partition of the subcontinent. Singh graduated from Punjab University in 1948 and attended Cambridge University in Britain, earning a First Class Honours degree in economics in 1957. He continued with his graduate studies at Oxford University and achieved a doctorate in economics in 1962. He returned to India, lecturing at Punjab University and at the Delhi School of Economics. In 1971 he joined the Indian civil service as an economic adviser in the commerce ministry. His talents were quickly rewarded, and he was appointed chief economic adviser in the ministry of finance in 1972. Singh made the transition from bureaucrat to politician in 1991 when he was appointed a member of India’s upper house of parliament (the Rajya Sabha). While a member of the upper house between 1991 and 1996, he also became the finance minister in Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao’s government. With Rao’s support, he initiated successful economic reforms aimed at slashing India’s infamous red tape, enhancing productivity, and liberalizing the economy. His goals were to end protectionism and open the Indian economy to foreign investment so that India would evolve to a mixed economy saving it from
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the verge of bankruptcy. As a result the economy became reinvigorated, inflation was controlled, and Indian industry began to show signs of strength. Singh’s political career was turbulent because he was neither charismatic nor a traditional politician. He lost the only time he contested a parliamentary election for the lower house (Lok Sabha). From 1998 to 2004 he was leader of the opposition but became prime minister in May 2004 when the Congress Party won a coalition majority in the national election. This is because Sonia Gandhi turned down the prime ministership. Singh became India’s first Sikh prime minister. This is impressive due to the troubled relationship between India’s Sikhs and the Hindu majority during the 1980s. (In 1984 government forces stormed the sacred Sikh Golden Temple in Amritsar to root out Sikh militants. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s Sikh bodyguards avenged this act by assassinating her months later.) Although governing such a diverse nation as India with a coalition is difficult, during his first two years in office Singh achieved a measure of success. The Indian economy continued to grow at an impressive rate. The fractured relationship with Pakistan showed signs of slowly improving, although the deeper issue of who controls Kashmir remained unresolved. Equally as important, political and trade relations with the United States improved considerably. The government also spearheaded a massive project aimed at eradicating rural poverty. In large part due to Singh’s reforms and pragmatic managerial style, India’s economy continued to expand and under his government, showed signs of emerging as a global economic power. See also Gandhi, Rajiv, and Sonia S. Further reading: Ahluwalia, Isher Judge, and I. M. D. Little, eds. India’s Economic Reforms and Development: Essays for Manmohan Singh. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998; “Country Briefings: India,” http://www.economist.com/ countries/India (cited April 2006); “Who, Me? India’s Unexpected Leader.” The Economist (May 22–28, 2004); www. news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia (cited May 2007). Ryan Touhey
Sino-Soviet Treaty (1950) The People’s Republic of China was proclaimed on October 1, 1949, and won immediate recognition from the Soviet Union and Eastern European communist nations. Not yet secure after winning the civil war
against the Nationalists, China needed support from the Soviet Union. Thus Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung), chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), declared his “lean to one side” policy to form an international united front with the Soviet Union. Mao went to Moscow in December 1949, his first trip abroad, ostensibly to help celebrate Joseph Stalin’s 70th birthday but more importantly to negotiate a treaty with the Soviet Union. A 30-year treaty of friendship, alliance, and mutual assistance was signed on February 14, 1950, clearly directed against the United States. A second agreement allowed the Soviet Union to continue its presence in Port Arthur and Dairen in China’s southern Manchuria and to operate a railway in the region (rights Stalin had obtained at Yalta in 1945 without agreement from China) until 1952. The treaty provided for a $300 million loan from the Soviet Union in five equal annual installments between 1950 and 1955. During the next decade the Soviet Union sent tens of thousands of scientists and advisers to help the Chinese army, navy, air force, and 156 industrial enterprises during China’s First Five-Year Plan. A total of 6,500 Chinese students went for advanced studies to the Soviet Union instead of Western countries; Russian replaced English as the compulsory second language in Chinese schools. In 1952 the Soviet Union returned to China the over U.S. $1 billion of loot it had taken from Manchuria at the end of World War II. China agreed to recognize independence for Outer Mongolia, a part of China that had become a Soviet satellite in 1924. In October 1950 China intervened in the Korean War to prevent the collapse of North Korea, an ally of both China and the Soviet Union. By the late 1950s the Moscow-Beijing Axis was collapsing for many reasons. Although both nations were ruled by communist parties, the CCP had from its inception resented Moscow’s domination and interference. Although Mao respected Stalin’s seniority in the communist world, he firmly rejected Nikita Khrushchev’s similar claim after Stalin’s death, and Mao offered himself as the world communist leader. Mao also denounced Khrushchev as revisionist for his de-Stalinization policy after 1956. In 1959 Khrushchev withdrew an earlier promise to help China build a nuclear bomb and recalled Soviet aid workers from China. Mao called Khrushchev a coward for backing down before the United States in the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Mao’s claim to be an original contributor to Marxism-Leninism, with special relevance to the non-
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Western world, was rejected by Moscow. Finally, China felt aggrieved over large territorial losses to imperial Russia in the 19th century and wanted the Soviet Union to acknowledge that they were the result of unequal and therefore illegal treaties, claims that the Soviet Union firmly rejected. Relations deteriorated further when Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev sent troops to Czechoslovakia in 1968 and announced his doctrine that the Soviet Union had the right to intervene in communist countries that deviated from its interpretation of the socialist cause. Serious border clashes between the Soviet Union and China occurred in 1969, and war loomed. Further reading: Ditmer, Lowell. Sino-Soviet Normalization and its International Implications, 1945–1990. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1992; MacFarquhar, Roderick, and John K. Fairbank, eds. Cambridge History of China, vol. 14, The People’s Republic of China, Part 1: The Emergence of Revolutionary China, 1949–1965. Cambridge,: Cambridge University Press, 1987; Schwartz, Harry. Tsars, Mandarins, and Commissars, A History of Chinese-Russian Relations. Rev. ed. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1973; Whiting, Allen S. China Crosses the Yalu: The Decision to Enter the Korean War. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1968. Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur
Solidarity movement Despite the fact that from 1945 to 1989 the Soviet Union imposed significant control over the internal and external affairs of eastern European nations, that control was never complete. At one time or another that situation was true in all Eastern bloc nations, but nowhere so much as in Poland. The Poles demonstrated their independent streak at intervals in the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s. In many instances there were riots and bloodshed, and Soviet troops stationed in Poland ostensibly as defense against a Western attack were used to keep order. In 1953 the Polish premier informed the Soviets that while he would accept military assistance from Soviet troops already in the country, he would mobilize the entire Polish army to fight them if more were sent in. In 1980 a labor union that named itself Solidarity would come into being. It would eventually play a principle role in the ending of the communist regime in Poland.
Solidarity (logo shown above) was founded in September 1980 in response to increasing food prices.
Solidarity was founded in September 1980 in immediate response to increasing food prices, which had already precipitated several strikes. There was already a basic organization in place around which representatives of the striking workers could meet and discuss issues. This was the Workers Defense Committee, which had come into being as a result of strikes, riots, and the killing and injuring of workers in the 1970s. The month before Solidarity was formed, almost 20,000 workers struck at the Lenin Shipyard in the city of Gdan´sk. These strikers, led by Lech Wałe˛sa, a shipyard electrician, locked themselves in the shipyard and were soon communicating with other groups who were joining in strikes of their own. The workers presented a list of demands that were granted by the government, which included the ability to organize free unions that were not sponsored or sanctioned by the Polish Government. With this victory, Solidarity would come into being, replace the old Workers Defense Committee, and then begin to grow throughout the country. In December another group, calling itself Rural Solidarity, which was the agricultural equivalent to the industrialized organization, also came into being. Growth was dramatic, and by mid-1981, nearly all laborers were members of or represented by Solidarity. The Polish government, which had made the concessions that allowed Solidarity to legally come into being, began to view developments with alarm. The same concern applied to the Soviet leadership. Leonid Brezhnev and members of the Soviet Politburo made their concerns increasingly clear to Poland’s head of state, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, who would feel pressure from the Soviet Union and at home.
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Encouraged by its newfound legalized existence and successes thus far, Solidarity became active in 1981, calling for additional strikes and increasing its demands. By late 1981, faced with the demands of Solidarity, Jaruzelski was coming under increased pressure. He received frequent calls from Brezhnev demanding that he put a stop to Solidarity’s activities. At the same time the Soviet army moved closer to the Polish border and conducted substantial maneuvers with other Warsaw Pact troops, thus underlining the threat that if he did not act on his own, Jaruzelski could face an invasion. At least that is what Jaruzelski said years later when on trial for treason. That trial, from which he was later acquitted, tried to resolve whether Jaruzelski had saved Poland from invasion by what he did to Solidarity or had betrayed Poland’s independence, however limited that might be. In mid-December 1981 Jaruzelski finally took action. Solidarity was suppressed. Lech Wałe˛sa and the other leaders of the union were imprisoned, and martial law was imposed. The Polish army now ran everything in the country, and any union activities, strikes, or demonstrations would be met with force. Eventually the leaders of Solidarity were quietly released, and, although the organization was illegal, it did remain active. Its leaders remained in contact with each other, and an underground organization, based on those that had existed during World War II, emerged. Western journalists were able to bring to the West a picture of Solidarity, no longer legal and not functioning as it had but still alive. Having imposed order, Jaruzelski was now compelled to improve the Polish economy. Brezhnev had died in 1982, and his two immediate successors were also dead by 1985 when Mikhail Gorbachev assumed responsibility for leading the Soviet Union. In the 1980s the Soviets were beginning to exercise looser control and endless assistance to the Eastern bloc nations. Jaruzelski’s attempts at reform were now opposed by Solidarity, which was reemerging as a political force. Widespread strikes in Poland forced Jaruzelski to begin conversations with Wałe˛sa and the Solidarity leadership. Solidarity was once again legalized in April 1989, and that same year it won a crushing majority in the national elections. A coalition of Solidarity and Communists formed a government in August 1989, and Wałe˛sa, who less than 10 years before had been jailed for his union activities, was now president of Poland. Since that time, Solidarity has declined in both membership and influence. There were personality and
philosophical clashes among several of the leaders, not least of whom was Wałe˛sa. It can also be argued that once it had defeated a common enemy that posed a major threat, it could not maintain cohesion on all issues. It did not have any of its candidates elected in 2001, and the membership is about a tenth of what it was in the early 1980s. See also cold war; Poland (1991–present). Further reading: Castle, Marjorie. Triggering Communism’s Collapse: Perceptions and Power in Poland’s Transition. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003; Cirtautas, Arista Maria. The Polish Solidarity Movement: Revolution, Democracy and Natural Rights. London: Routledge, 1997; Garton Ash, Timothy. The Polish Revolution: Solidarity. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002; MacEachin, Douglas J. U.S. Intelligence and the Polish Crisis: 1980–1981. Washington, D.C.: Center for the Study of Intelligence, 2000; Wałe˛sa, Lech. The Struggle and the Triumph: An Autobiography. New York: Arcade, 1992. Robert Stacy
Somalia (1950–2006) Following the end of World War II, the British administered Somalia until 1950, when it was divided, with southern Somalia put under Italian trusteeship and the Ogaden returned to Ethiopia, with the remainder of Somalia, held by the British, prepared for independence. The decision to allow the Italians to supervise any part of Somalia was controversial given their colonial record in the region, and it sparked riots in 1950. Elections were held in southern Somalia in 1956, and these were won by the Somali Youth League. In February the Somali National League won a majority in elections in northern Somalia. The platforms of both groups were to reunify Somalia and achieve independence which was granted on July 1, 1960. The first president of Somalia was Aden Abdullah Osman Daar, who had served in the Italian colonial administration until 1941. He had been president of the National Assembly until 1960 when he became president of the Constituent Assembly, a position he held until independence. The first prime minister, Mohammed Ibrahim Egal, was from British Somaliland; he joined the Somali National League Party in 1956 and became its secretary-general two years later. He held the position for just over two weeks before stepping down on July 12, 1960, to become minister of defense. Replacing him
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integrate Somalia. One of these policies was the creation and dissemination of a written Somali language. In 1975 a drought struck Somalia, and this led to a famine which saw thousands of people in Somalia, and also in neighboring Ethiopia, dying. Two years later Somalia attacked Ethiopia, with Siad Barre keen to create his Greater Somalia which was to include the Ogaden (from Ethiopia), Djibouti, and also northern Kenya. In 1977 Somalia was in news headlines all over the world when a German Lufthansa Flight 181 from Majorca, Spain, was hijacked to the Somali capital, Mogadishu. There the GSG-9, a crack German antiterrorist commando force formed after the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, stormed the plane and released the hostages unharmed.
A crying Somali toddler walks past a Botswana Defense Force soldier during an arms raid on the Bakara Market.
was Abdirashid Ali Shermarke, from the Somali Youth League, who had studied political science at the University of Rome. Unfortunately, not long after independence, Somalia became embroiled in a dispute with the British who granted the Somali-dominated Northern Frontier District of Kenya to the Republic of Kenya. Somalia broke off diplomatic relations with Britain in 1963. The main problem facing Somalia was the integration of the two halves of the country, plagued by ethnic rivalries, and worries that infrastructure development in one part of the country was disadvantaging the other. Tensions with Kenya and Ethiopia proved intractable. War with the latter broke out over the Ogaden in 1964. Although it did not last long, it served to destabilize the country, which was becoming beset with factional troubles and the proliferation of political parties and corruption. In 1964 Shermarke was replaced as prime minister by Abdirizak Haji Husain, also from the Somali Youth League, and on July 10, 1967, Shermarke was elected as president of Somalia, a post he held until his assassination on October 15, 1969, by Somali police officers. The assassination led to a military coup six days later, which brought Major-General Mohammed Siad Barre to power. He then became president of the Supreme Revolutionary Council and head of state, also serving as prime minister until January 30, 1987. Siad Barre was involved in introducing a program he called “scientific socialism,” by which he sought to
forced to flee Surviving an attempted military coup in April 1978, Siad Barre came to lead an increasingly autocratic regime that started to face trouble from internal Somali resistance groups. In particular, the Somalia Salvation Democratic Front used bases in Ethiopia to attack Somali soldiers, eventually overrunning parts of northern Somalia. In August 1990 the Somali Salvation Democratic Front allied with two other groups, the Somali Patriotic Front and the Somali National Movement (SNM), to form a loose coalition. Siad Barre himself had been seriously injured in a car accident in May 1986, but remained in control of Mogadishu. He was forced to flee the country on January 26, 1991, going first to Kenya and eventually settling in Nigeria in 1992. With the victorious rebels seizing control of Mogadishu, Ali Mahdi Muhammad became the president of the country, with the task of bringing together the various factions. Northern Somali separatists appointed the leader of the SNM, Abdurahman Ahmed Ali, as president of the breakaway Somaliland Republic. Fighting continued, and Ali Mahdi hastily left the Somali capital in November 1991 after the supporters of General Mohammad Farrah Aydid attacked Mogadishu, capturing the city after bloody street fighting. Aydid then proclaimed himself head of the new government, managing to fight off an attack in April 1992 by supporters of Siad Barre. Aid agencies estimated that as many as 2,000 people were dying each day from hunger in and around Mogadishu alone. With Aydid holding food supplies only for his supporters, the United Nations felt the duty to act, and on August 12, 1992, they had permission from Aydid to deploy troops to protect the aid workers. The result was 500 armed United Nations soldiers being deployed and a massive relief operation taking place. This part of the aid operation went well, although there were some
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problems in the towns of Baidoa and Bardera in the west of the country. By mid-1993 the aid mission had been changed with the U.S. marines being deployed to achieve political objectives. This seemed to include the overthrow of the Aydid government, which led to a U.S. helicopter attack on an alleged Aydid munitions base on July 12, 1993, killing a large number of Somali clan leaders who had gathered for a conference. The political climate moved against the Americans as the clan alliances reformed. On October 3, 1993, some 140 U.S. marines abseiled from Black Hawk helicopters into Mogadishu, with their mission being to abduct two senior lieutenants of Aydid. The operation was planned to last no longer than an hour, but some U.S. Marines were pinned down by thousands of armed Somalis; by the time they were evacuated the following morning, there were 18 U.S. Marines killed and more than 70 badly injured. factional shifts With the United States clearly against General Aydid, he moved to form alliances with some of his erstwhile enemies, the Americans unable to keep up with the factional shifts. In November 1994 Aydid called a General Conference on Somali Reconciliation, but Ali Mahdi boycotted it, as did the Somali Salvation Alliance. In June 1995 Aydid himself was ousted by Osman Ali Ato. Following the death of Aydid in 1996, his son, Hussein Aydid, a former U.S. Marine who had been involved in the Somali operation, became the leader of the United Somali Congress and took his father’s title as interim president of Somalia. Hussein Aydid refused to take part in the National Salvation Council when it was formed by leaders of 26 of Somalia’s factions in January 1997. They agreed on a peace formula that saw the introduction of a federal system for the country, allowing the warlords to retain their local power bases. This meant that by 1998 the country was effectively divided into three parts: Somalia, consisting of the southern provinces around Mogadishu; the former British areas in the north becoming Somaliland; and Puntland in the northeast. Frequent peace conferences were to be held to try to work out common policies on certain issues. Although the infighting had died down, the problems over the famine continued with 650,000 people facing food shortages in April 2000. This led to food riots and instability in Mogadishu, forcing the warring factions to declare Baidoa the “provisional capital.” By this time, large numbers of educated Somalis had fled.
An interim Somali National Assembly was formed in October 2001 with Salad Hassan Abdikassim (Abdiqasim Salad Hassan) as the interim president. Problems with Ethiopia continued, and the interim prime minister, Ali Khalif Galaydh, accused Ethiopia of trying to destabilize the country, supporting some of the clans that wanted separatism. Abdikassim appointed himself interim president of the Transitional National Government, and in November 2001 Abshir Farah Hassan was elected as the interim prime minister. The September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and the subsequent War on Terror saw the U.S. military take a keen interest in Somalia and the level of Islamic fundamentalist influence in the country. Since then the Somali “government” has gradually come to support, however reluctantly, the United States in its War on Terror. The United States has consequently rewarded pro-U.S. groups in the country. On October 14, 2004, Abdullah Yusuf Ahmed became president, taking over from Salad Hassan Abdikassim, and in November 2004, Ali Mohammed Ghadi became prime minister of the transitional federal government. However, after a failed assassination attempt, Prime Minister Ghadi fled Mogadishu, returning in 2006 when Ethiopian troops, aided by the United States, backed him and on December 21, 2006, started a new war in Somalia. Further Reading: Bowden, Mark. Black Hawk Down. London: Transworld Publishers, 2000; Drysdale, John. The Somali Dispute. London: Pall Mall Press, 1964; Laitin, David D., and Said Sheikh Samatar. Somalia: A Nation in Search of a State. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989; Lewis, I. M. A Modern History of Somalia: Nation and State in the Horn of Africa. New York: Longman, 1980; Pestalozza, Luigi. The Somalian Revolution. Paris: Éditions Afrique Asie Amerique Latine, 1973. Justin Corfield
South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) The South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), or the Manila Pact, was formed in Manila on September 8, 1954, by the United States, Great Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Thailand, and the Philippines. A special protocol added Cambodia, Laos, and South Vietnam to the protection of SEATO.
The main reason behind the formation of a collective defense treaty in Southeast Asia was the containment of communism. The United States in the cold war period wanted to prevent communism from spreading. After the defeat of the French in Indochina the Geneva Conference had been called in 1954. While the peacemaking process was going on in Geneva, the United States initiated SEATO. The main architect was the U.S. secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, who wanted collective defense against communist aggression. After the establishment of communism in China, there was apprehension in the United States that South and Southeast Asia faced a threat from communists. North Vietnam had become communist, and in Laos the Pathet Lao had become powerful. Bangkok was the headquarters of SEATO. The post of secretary-general was instituted in 1957, and a Thai diplomat named Pote Sarasin was the first person to hold the post. The articles of the treaty spelled out the motives, principles, and functioning of SEATO. In the preamble, the sovereign equality of states was recognized. The members pledged under the provisions of article I to settle disputes by peaceful means. Article III envisaged economic cooperation and social well-being. SEATO had a provision that all members should agree on intervention in case of a dispute. This became an obstacle to intervening in the crises of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, as there was no unanimity among members for intervention. There were joint military exercises each year among the signatories. According to the provisions of the Geneva Conference Cambodia, Laos, and South Vietnam could not join a military alliance. A Pacific Charter was added to the treaty at the insistence of the Philippines, calling for the upholding of the principles of self-determination and equal rights. Any attempt to destroy the sovereignty and territorial integrity of member states would be checked. There would also be cooperation in economic development and social welfare among signatories. The treaty was viewed as another attempt to bring the cold war to South and Southeast Asia. Only three Asian states, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Thailand, had joined it. India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar were in favor of a policy of nonalignment. In its ongoing conflict with India, Pakistan thought SEATO might be helpful. It also had a dispute with another neighbor state, Afghanistan. The Philippines and Thailand had close military cooperation with the United States. Manila was in favor of a multilateral pact due to the influence of the
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United States. The joining of the Philippines invited criticism from the Afro-Asian bloc, alleging that it was serving the designs of neocolonialism in the region. Thailand joined SEATO because of security concerns. Great Britain wanted its presence felt in the region and was also concerned with the security of Hong Kong and Malaya. France lost interest after the debacle in Indochina but it considered SEATO a barrier to the expansion of communism. Australia and New Zealand were committed even though an alliance with the United States, the ANZUS pact, had been signed in 1951. The Soviet Union, China, and North Vietnam condemned the treaty. They pointed out that the inclusion of Cambodia, Laos, and South Vietnam in the sphere of action of SEATO was contrary to the spirit of the Geneva Conference of 1954. China attacked SEATO for threatening peace in Asia. SEATO was not helpful to the United States and Thailand in preventing ongoing communist victories in Indochina, including during the Vietnam War. Thailand and the Philippines helped the administration of the United States by providing air bases and sending troops, but in the civil war in Laos in 1961–62, it was more out of their close relations with the United States rather than an obligation under SEATO. One of the factors was the clause that demanded unanimity before action could be taken. In the meeting of the SEATO Council of Ministers on March 27, 1961, multilateral intervention was not possible due to the French opposition. Great Britain also did not support intervention, lest it jeopardize the peace effort in Geneva in 1961 pertaining to Laos. It was only a question of time before SEATO would end. The United States relied on its military might in the Vietnam War while Great Britain, France, Australia, and New Zealand did not want to get involved. Pakistan and France withdrew from SEATO in November 1973 and June 1974, respectively. After the communist victory in the Indochinese states in 1975, SEATO became an anachronism in the region, and it was decided to disband the treaty in a meeting in September 1975 held in New York. SEATO was formally dissolved two years afterward. See also ANZUS Treaty; Association of Southeast Asian Nations (asean); North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Further reading: Braibanti, Ralph. International Implications to the Manila Pact. New York: American Institute of Pacific Relations, 1958; Buckley, Roger. The United States in the Asia-Pacific Since 1945. New York: Cambridge University
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Press, 2002; Buszynski, Leszek. SEATO, the Failure of an Alliance Strategy. Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1983. Patit Paban Mishra
Southern Baptist Convention The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is the largest Protestant body in the United States. Baptists emerged after the First Great Awakening in New England and quickly found the southern United States a fertile region for growth. Committed in equal degrees to a conservative doctrine, aggressive evangelism, and local congregational autonomy, Baptists felt the strains of slavery. In 1845 tensions led to the formation of the SBC, which allowed Baptists in the South to pursue missions and educational efforts on their own. Their regional seclusion protected the denomination from the schisms of the early 20th century. Indeed, Baptists eschewed the kind of denominational controls exercised by many other churches, particularly regarding doctrine. Free of theological controversies and experiencing numerical, institutional, and regional expansion, Southern Baptists enjoyed great self-confidence. Baptists believed that they were called to convert the South, that the South would lead the nation, and that the United States would lead the world. Denominational unity was critical to fulfilling this mission, but by the second half of the century expansion brought diversity, and a series of small theological rifts in SBC educational efforts portended greater controversies in the future. Although their divisions were mild in comparison with debates in other denominations, Baptists in the South suffered a more shattering blow during the Civil Rights controversies of the 1940s–70s. Many southerners saw these changes as a threat to their traditional way of life. Conservatives grew anxious and less tolerant of change of any kind; progressives felt remorse over decades of SBC inaction. By the 1970s prosperity and urbanization seemed to be taking the South into the secular currents sweeping the rest of the nation. It was against that background that a bitter battle between conservatives and moderates exploded during the 1980s. For years, conservatives contended, denominational boards and seminaries had been controlled by liberals who were allowing liberalism to undercut the theological foundation of the church’s evangelistic mission. Now they were organizing to take back their church. From the moderates’ perspective this same effort appeared a departure from Baptist traditions of respect for local
autonomy and the right of believers to interpret the Bible for themselves. Moderates charged that conservatives were advocating the kind of coercive denominational intrusions and the mingling of religion and politics that Baptists traditionally rejected. Conservatives successfully framed the debate as one of accepting or rejecting the Bible, and the majority of SBC members sided with them. Moderates charged them with securing power through questionable parliamentary maneuvers, but, by the end of the 1980s, the conservative takeover of the SBC was all but complete. Further reading: Ammerman, Nancy Tatom, ed. Southern Baptists Observed: Multiple Perspectives on a Changing Denomination. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993; Kell, Carl, ed. Exiled: Voices of the Southern Baptist Convention Holy War. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006. John Haas
Soviet Union, dissolution of the In 1989 eastern European countries of the Warsaw Pact, which had been beholden to the Soviet Union since the end of World War II, had their communist governments replaced with noncommunist governments. For the first time in over 30 years the borders between eastern and western Europe were opened. The following year the Congress of People’s Deputies changed the Soviet constitution and removed the Communist Party’s monopoly from the constitution by allowing multiple parties. In March the baltic states held elections and their national independence parties gained majorities in each of the republics. At this time Lithuania decided to declare its independence from the Soviet Union, the first republic to do so. In June 1990 Russia declared its right to rule itself separate from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. During the remainder of the summer the other republics also declared their right to self-rule. Mikhail Gorbachev tried to find a way to salvage the Soviet Union. His efforts were to be put to a vote in August 1991, but hard-line communists launched an unsuccessful coup in Moscow. The failed coup brought the Communist Party down, and none of the republics was interested in trying to save the Soviet Union. On Christmas Day 1991 Gorbachev resigned, ending the Soviet Union. Throughout 1989 Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria, which had been
under Soviet control since the end of World War II, established democratic governments and cut their ties with the Soviet Union. Seeing these events, the Baltic countries started to voice their desire to be free of the Soviet Union also. The Baltic countries had been absorbed by the Soviet Union as part of a treaty (the Nazi-Soviet Pact) it had made with Nazi Germany in 1939. Gorbachev did not care how a republic had come to be part of the Soviet Union; in his view none of the republics should be allowed to leave the Soviet Union. Seeing the events in eastern Europe only encouraged the Baltic republics. Attempts to buy off the republics with token freedoms only encouraged them to continue to push for separation from the Soviet Union. Following the Baltic republics’ lead was the Moldavian Republic. Originally part of Romania, Moldavia was given to the Soviet Union as part of the NaziSoviet Pact. Independence movements also appeared in the Trans-Caucasian region of the Soviet Union, made up of the republics of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. In Armenia and Azerbaijan, the growth in nationalistic parties also led to a dispute between them over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. In Georgia, the massacre of female protesters in the capital of Tbilisi in April 1989 only fueled the desire to be free of the Soviet Union. In early February 1990, the Communist Party’s Central Committee met to consider a draft proposal to allow multiple parties. The congress also created the office of the president of the Soviet Union and elected Gorbachev to the office. After the congress, in April, Gorbachev announced the Law of Secession, which laid out the process that the republics would have to follow in order to gain their independence. The process was long and drawn out. One of the first uses of the law was to pressure Lithuania to do as the Soviet government said or face the consequences. Lithuanian president Vytautas Landsbergis refused, saying that a foreign power had no right to make decisions about how his country should be run. On April 18, the Soviet government started an economic blockade of Lithuania. The Soviets lifted the blockade on June 29 when the Lithuanian parliament suspended the independence decree. Latvia (May 4) and Estonia (May 8) followed Lithuania’s lead, and even though Gorbachev outlawed their decrees, they did not suffer the blockade as Lithuania did. The Baltic republics were not the only ones moving toward independence. In Russia, the Russian Supreme Soviet elected Boris Yeltsin as chairman on May 29. Running against 13 other candidates, Yeltsin intro-
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duced a platform that pushed for Russian sovereignty in the Soviet Union, making Russian law take precedent over Soviet law; provided for multiparty democracy; and declared that Russia should conduct its own foreign policy with all other countries, including other republics of the Soviet Union. The actual declaration came on June 12, 1990, at which time Russia also declared its right to control the natural resources of its country. Other republics followed suit. Through the end of 1990 Lithuania continued to try to work out a deal with the Soviet government, but the Soviets continued to stall. Therefore, on January 2, 1991, Landsbergis withdrew the suspension of the independence decree. In response to this action, paramilitary police in Vilnius (the capital of Lithuania) and Riga (the capital of Latvia) seized various buildings. Then on January 7 the Soviet Ministry of Defense ordered troops into all three of the Baltic States as well as Moldavia, Georgia, and the Ukraine. The Soviet military continued to occupy buildings belonging to the Lithuanian government, and on January 13 it attacked the capital’s television center and in the process killed 14 people and wounded over 200. At about the same time, Gorbachev was telling the Soviet government that force would not be used against the people of Lithuania. These contradictory actions and talk hurt Gorbachev, who claimed not to have had any advanced knowledge of what the military was going to do. A few days later, on January 20, violence broke out in Latvia when Soviet paramilitary police stormed a government building in Latvia and killed two local police officers. The Baltic republics gained support from Russia when Yeltsin signed a document recognizing the independence of the Baltic States on behalf of Russia, which was exerting its right to conduct its own foreign policy separate from that of the Soviet Union. Although the Baltic republics had started out leading the move toward independence from the Soviet Union, Russia now began to take a more prominent role. In January 1991 Gorbachev issued a decree that the Soviet army was to patrol the streets of the larger cities in the Soviet Union to help stop crime and control protests; Russia objected. When Yeltsin attacked Gorbachev during a television interview, Yeltsin found himself under attack by various groups. Although Gorbachev’s actions might be decidedly anti-independence for the republics, he still had the support of many of the people in the Soviet Union and Western countries. On March 17, 1991, the idea of maintaining a union of the republics was put to a vote of the people of the Soviet Union. The vote passed, although six of the
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republics (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Armenia, Georgia, and Moldavia) did not participate in the referendum since they claimed that they were not part of the Soviet Union. Yeltsin claimed that the referendum was nothing more then an attempt by Gorbachev to generate support for his leadership. Gorbachev then called a conference and invited Yeltsin and the presidents of eight other republics to talk about a proposal for a new Union Treaty and new Union Constitution. Gorbachev and the other presidents signed a declaration supporting the drafting of a new treaty and constitution. May saw more changes as the republics continued to move away from the Soviet Union. On May 5 the Russian branch of the KGB separated itself from the Soviet Union’s institution. Moldavia changed its official name to the Moldavian Republic, dropping the words Soviet and Socialist. Then on May 26 Georgia had its first-ever direct presidential election. the coup Gorbachev and Yeltsin continued to work out the details of the new Union Treaty. The treaty would keep the Soviet Union alive, but would limit the areas over which it could exercise control and make participation in the union voluntary. Before the treaty was enacted, a group of hard-line communists launched a coup to remove Gorbachev from power. The coup lasted for only three days. The committee in charge of the coup announced a state of emergency and placed Gorbachev under house arrest, cutting off his ability to communicate with the outside world. They then tried to get him to sign a decree declaring a state of emergency, but he refused. With Gorbachev’s refusal to cooperate, the coup started to come unraveled. The plotters had planned to arrest Yeltsin also, but missed their chance. Instead, Yeltsin went to the Russian Parliament building and appealed to the citizens of Moscow to ignore the unlawful coup. The military was unwilling to move against the civilians, and the coup ended on August 21. Gorbachev returned to Moscow. Because of the coup, Yeltsin became the hero of the hour, and his popularity grew rapidly. Unfortunately for Gorbachev, his popularity plummeted and accelerated the decline of the Soviet Union. Yeltsin forced Gorbachev to return control of the natural resources and enterprises on Russian territory back to Russia from the Soviet Union. December saw the Soviet Union brought to an end. On December 1 the Ukraine held a referendum to allow the people to vote in support of or against the declara-
tion of independence from the Soviet Union. The referendum passed by a wide margin. Then the leaders of Russia, the Ukraine, and Belarus met to determine the future of the Soviet Union and their republics. On December 8 they announced the end of the Soviet Union and the creation of a Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Membership in the CIS was open to all former members of the Soviet Union and any other state interested in joining. On December 12 Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan joined the CIS. More meetings were held on December 21, and Moldavia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia joined. During this meeting the republics agreed to abolish the position of president of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev still held the position, but on December 25, he announced his resignation. With Gorbachev’s resignation the remaining members of the Soviet Parliament had the Soviet flag removed from the Kremlin, and at midnight on December 31, 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. See also Russian Federation. Further reading: Hanson, Philip. The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Economy: An Economic History of the USSR from 1945. New York: Pearson Education, 2003; Pearson, Raymond. The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire. 2d ed. New York: Palgrave, 2002; Resmick, Stephen A., and Richard D. Wolff. Class Theory and History: Capitalism and Communism in the USSR. New York: Routledge, 2002. Dallace W. Unger, Jr.
space exploration Humankind’s exploration of space began in the 1950s, with the first satellite, the Russian Sputnik, launched by rocket on October 4, 1957. It was followed on November 3 by another, carrying a dog named Laika. The United States moved into space exploration on February 1, 1958, with Explorer I. A stream of similar robotic craft followed from both countries, carrying instruments that made various important discoveries. Early space pioneering efforts built on the works of pre–World War II inventors such as the Russian schoolmaster Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, whose writings set out the basic principles for rocket propulsion, suggested multistage vehicles, and proposed liquid hydrogen as a fuel. In the United States, Professor Robert Goddard suggested a method for reaching the moon. Goddard built rockets too, and in 1935 successfully launched one
that reached a height of two kilometers. Rocketry in World War II saw the invention of the V2 missile, with a range of around 300 kilometers, a top speed of 6,000 KPH, and a payload of over a ton. Following the war many German rocket engineers, including Wernher von Braun, were brought to the United States, while Soviet forces captured personnel and equipment from the V2 launching site of Peenemunde. On April 12, 1961, the Soviets again led the way with the launch of Yuri Gagarin, a Russian cosmonaut, into space to become the first human to leave Earth. His mission lasted 1 hour and 48 minutes; he made a single orbit of the planet. The United States countered with a Mercury space capsule carrying Alan B. Shepard on May 5. The effects of space travel on humans were of course largely unknown. The early manned missions resulted in considerable study of the physical damage of g-force, radiation, and weightlessness. Rapid developments in hundreds of areas followed, as spacesuits, living quarters, and methodologies for delivering food were all pioneered, along with rapid improvements in the speed, range, and payload of rockets. Meanwhile, robot explorers were recovering more data to inform manned missions. The first probe to journey to the Moon was launched on September 12, 1959, by the Soviet Union. Luna 2 reached its destination in 34 hours. The U.S. probes in the main were spurred by President John F. Kennedy’s address to the U.S. Congress on May 25, 1961. The Ranger probes explored the Moon’s surface, photographing it before crashing into it; the probe therefore provided transmitted data that resolved images of around half a meter across, in contrast to the best telescopes of the time, which could only resolve to around 500 meters. There was much debate on what the surface of the Moon actually looked like and whether it could support the landing of a heavy manned craft. Was the surface so rough no spacecraft could touch down without damage? Was the Moon dust so thick that any spacecraft would sink into huge drifts? The Lunar Orbiter series of probes were designed to map the surface of the Moon so the best sites for exploration could be chosen. By the end of the five missions, 99 percent of the moon had been photographed to a resolution of 66 meters or better, and smaller areas had been photographed to within one meter. The space race saw the Americans and the Russians competing as to who could reach the moon first; the dual projects were underscored by the cold war and the military implications of mastering space flight. In the end, the
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Russians never put a man onto the surface of the Moon but instead landed several robot explorers. Both sides were, by the mid-1960s, progressing further down the road of manned spacecraft that could carry more than one astronaut. The rockets to launch the progressively heavier spacecraft began to increase in size, with the eventual development of the Saturn series, which still remain some of the most powerful lifting devices ever built. In the United States, the Mercury one-person spacecraft was followed by the two-person Gemini craft. The three-person Apollo vehicles were developed, a two-part craft that included a lunar lander as well as a command section that would stay in orbit while the lander descended to the Moon’s surface. The Russian program saw many achievements. The first female in space was Valentina Tereshkova, who completed 48 orbits in the Soviet Union’s Vostok 6 on June 16, 1963. The first space walk—a weightless venture outside a capsule—was achieved by Aleksei Leonov on March 18, 1965. The walk lasted for 10 minutes. However, the Soviet Union’s space program was not without human cost: On April 23, 1967, the landing parachutes of the Soyuz 1 space capsule failed and cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov was killed. On January 27, 1967, the new U.S. Apollo program experienced tragedy when a fire broke out in the command module during a launch of the first piloted flight, designated AS-204. Three astronauts died: Mercury and Gemini mission veteran Virgil Grissom; Edward White; and Roger Chaffee, an astronaut preparing for his first spaceflight. The subsequent investigation and report saw substantial improvements to mission safety. The AS-204 mission craft was renamed Apollo 1 in honor of the crew. Powered by the enormous Saturn V three-stage rockets, the Apollo missions grew in their ability to take the astronauts further from the surface of Earth. On October 11, 1968, the first manned Apollo mission flew successfully; around the same time Russian spacecraft carrying live animals were successfully orbiting the Moon before returning to Earth. Apollo 8 made the first human-manned circumnavigation of the Moon in December 1968. Apollo 10 was a “full dress rehearsal” of the proposed landing and carried out all of the proposed operations short of an actual descent to the lunar surface, although it descended to within nine miles of the Moon in the detached lunar module. On July 20, 1969, after a four-day trip, Apollo 11’s lander separated from the main spacecraft with astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin on board, while Michael Collins remained in orbit. The
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lunar module, named Eagle, successfully touched down, and, shortly afterward, filmed by the remotely controlled camera attached to the outside of the spacecraft, Armstrong emerged to back down the short ladder to the surface. His steps were watched by millions of people via a television signal beamed back to Earth, with many millions more listening via radio. As Armstrong’s foot touched the surface of the Moon, he spoke the words, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” Mankind had reached another world. A total of seven lunar landings were made, with significant achievements made on each mission. Some 381.6 kilograms of lunar rocks were brought back to Earth, and each successive landing after Apollo 11 left behind an automated surface laboratory. The last three missions carried extremely sophisticated mapping cameras, and other instruments measured magnetic fields, chemical composition, and radioactivity. craft failure Apollo 13’s mission was aborted due to craft failure. An oxygen tank on the spacecraft had blown up and the normal supply of electricity, light, and water to the craft was lost around 200,000 miles from Earth. A unique and innovative program of rigged repairs and procedure invention followed, resulting in the eventual safe return of the three astronauts to Earth. Apollo missions continued until December 1972, with different sites visited and a wheeled lunar rover successfully deployed to carry astronauts further from the spacecraft. The missions increased the duration of time spent on the surface from hours to days. Twelve astronauts walked on the lunar surface. The last astronaut to leave the Moon was scientist Jack Schmitt. Further space exploration programs commenced with Skylab, a section of a Saturn V rocket that was successfully placed in orbit and visited on several occasions by teams of astronaut/scientists who stayed in residence for ever-lengthening periods to conduct experiments. The program terminated in 1979. A Soviet-American rendezvous in space, the Apollo-Soyuz mission, took place in 1975. The development of the space shuttle, a reusable craft capable of returning in a glide to Earth’s surface, began in 1970, centering around the idea of a cheaper alternative to previous craft. The program used these spacecraft from their first flight in 1981 until the present. The shuttle fleet can each carry a payload of 30,000 kilograms to orbit. Mission loads have consisted of satellites, experiments, and materials for the International Space Station.
The Soviets also pursued a permanent presence in space. A series of space stations called Salyut were launched, using Soyuz spacecraft on ferry missions. In 1986 Salyut was followed by the modular space station Mir. Following improved relations between Russia and other nations at the end of the cold war, Russian cosmonauts joined with the other countries contributing to, and working within, the International Space Station. stark reminders Space flight is not without its hazards, as was discovered in the early days of space exploration with the loss of the Soyuz 1 and Apollo 1 crews. Improvements in safety through redesign and development of spacecraft and propulsion systems have greatly reduced risk of catastrophic failure. Nevertheless, the severe stresses placed on spacecraft and their systems, together with the risk associated with the application of cutting-edge technology, continue to make manned spaceflight inherently dangerous. Stark reminders of this were the loss of the spacecraft and crew of the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia. The Hubble Space Telescope is the largest astronomical telescope ever sent into space. Launched in 1990 by a space shuttle, the telescope’s placement outside Earth’s atmosphere gives it a unique view of the universe. Built by the Lockheed Missiles and space company, the space telescope has a length of 13.3 meters, or 43 feet 6 inches; a diameter of 3.1–4.3 meters, or 10–14 feet; and a weight of 11,600 kilograms, or 25,500 pounds. NASA named the world’s first space-based optical telescope after the U.S. astronomer Edwin P. Hubble. Dr. Hubble confirmed an “expanding” universe, which provided the foundation for the big bang theory. With a mission duration of up to 20 years, Hubble is visited regularly by space shuttle crews for regular servicing. At an altitude of 380 miles (612 kilometers) in a low-Earth orbit, the telescope completes an orbit of Earth every 97 minutes. Sensitive to ultraviolet through near infrared light, the telescope relays to Earth three to four gigabytes of information per day. Powered by two 25-foot solar panels, the telescope has revealed new information on the age of the universe, made findings on black holes, and provided visual proof that dust disks around young stars are common, reinforcing the assumption that planetary systems are plentiful in the universe. hubble’s replacement Scheduled for launch in 2011, the James Webb Space Telescope is intended to replace Hubble. This telescope
will see objects 400 times fainter than those visible with Earth-based telescopes. By contrast, the Hubble can see objects 60 times fainter than those visible with Earthbased telescopes. The first components for the International Space Station were taken into orbit in 1998, and the station received its first crew on November 2, 2000, marking the first day a permanent human presence in space was achieved. The space station has grown and evolved into an unprecedented laboratory complex. Offering a microgravity environment that cannot be duplicated on Earth, the station furthers knowledge of science and of how the human body functions for extended periods of time in space. By the time the station had been operating for five years, 89 scientific investigations had been conducted. A complete characterization study of the radiation environment in the station was done, with evaluation of models of radiation shielding by the station’s structure. With 15,000 cubic feet of habitable volume assembled by late 2005, the space station at that point had more room than a conventional three-bedroom house. Astronauts and scientists from a variety of nations have visited and worked in the space station. Civilian and private missions into space have been achieved. The California millionaire and former NASA rocket scientist Dennis Tito was the first private space tourist to visit the ISS for a 10-day excursion in April 2001. Test pilot Mike Melvill took the privately built rocket plane SpaceShip One to an altitude of more than 100 kilometers, the acknowledged point at which space begins, on July, 12, 2004. Robot explorers have also achieved an enormous amount in the conquest of space. The first interplanetary explorer, the United States’ Mariner II, was launched on August, 26, 1962, to explore Venus and successfully reported a high surface temperature and the absence of a magnetic field. In January 2004 two NASA robot explorers named Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars. The sixwheeled craft crawled over the surface, measuring, photographing, and analyzing, and surprised their controllers by continuing to function for over a year, during which time they traveled for several miles. On December 25, 2004, the NASA Cassini spacecraft, nearing Saturn, released the European Space Agency’s Huygens probe toward the surface of the ringed planet’s largest moon, Titan. Parachuting to the Moon’s surface, the probe’s cameras and spectrometers analyzed the chemical composition of Titan and transmitted data back to scientists on Earth.
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Behind for many of the first years of the space race, the United States won the ultimate prize: the first man on the Moon.
Other probes have been sent to all of the planets in the solar system, including distant Pluto with the launch of the New Horizons probe in January 2006. Some probes have had lengthy careers and considerable success. The Pioneer space probe, launched on March 2, 1972, was the first spacecraft to travel through the asteroid belt and the first spacecraft to make direct observations and obtain close-up images of Jupiter. It made its closest encounter with Jupiter on December 3, 1973, passing within 81,000 miles. Pioneer’s last, very weak signal was received on January 23, 2003. Pioneer 10 continues into interstellar space, heading for the red star Aldebaran, about 68 light years away. It will take Pioneer over 2 million years to reach its destination. Another development of the post-Moon program has been the space community’s understandings of asteroid dangers. A “dinosaur-killer” strike is now thought to be avoidable, due to a program of surveying and tracking all heavenly bodies. Such ambitious ideas have been supported by the success of missions such as the Stardust spacecraft, launched in 1999. This mission managed to capture particles from a comet beyond the Earth-Moon orbit and return them to Earth. Other aspects of space exploration are numerous. The discovery of other planets orbiting distant stars has been made possible; the Earth is ringed by satellites enabling advanced communications and a Global Positioning System (GPS); and superior meteorology and detailed imaging have been developed. Various spin-offs
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from the space program for the everyday world include such variables as the development of freeze-dried foods and materials such as Teflon. Progress has been not as fast as science fiction written from the 1930s to the 1980s depicted—space flight has proved expensive and difficult, and the manned Moon bases and Martian cities have not happened. However, other nations besides the United States and the Soviet Union—a collective European approach and manned missions from China—have begun space exploration and plans are under way to see a human presence on both the Moon and Mars. Two basic difficulties have to be overcome if human exploration of other stars and their solar systems is to succeed. The first is the speed of the spacecraft. The fastest vessel ever built (by 2006) was the New Horizons probe, which achieved a speed shortly after launch of 10.07 miles per second, or 36,256 MPH. The nuclear-powered craft crossed the Moon’s orbit around nine hours after liftoff. Even at this speed, the estimated mission duration to Pluto is around nine years. If the mission were manned, this would mean an overall duration of 18 years traveling plus the exploration time. If this craft’s speed were applied to reach the nearest star system to Earth, the mission time would be hundreds of years. Therein lies the second major problem—the duration humans can withstand space conditions. The long-term effects of weightless space flight are still being studied, but it is doubtful that such missions could be withstood by a human crew. Scientists believe the craft would have to have some sort of gravitational compensation. A manned, one-way, long-term mission is also an unknown, although science fiction has done a great deal to explore both of these issues. Indeed, space flight may have provided some answers by extrapolating various scenarios from the work of physicists that may get around interstellar exploration problems. If space is not an empty vacuum and contains distortions, as has been proved, then the “warps” in space may provide points where great distances can be surpassed, rather in the way a fly can travel from one end of a curved scarf to the other end by simply flying between the two points rather than walking the entire length of the scarf. There may also be ways to build spacecraft that fly at much faster speeds; light sails, antimatter rockets, and drives utilizing alternative theories of gravity and electromagnetism might allow much greater speeds. But then other problems arise: that of the relativity time-space equation, for example, and how to get humans to cope with the acceleration and deceleration speeds such a spacecraft would demand.
Although the difficulties of exploring beyond the solar system are great, they may not be insurmountable. One fact remains: If humans want to survive beyond the certain degradation of our own star and its planetary system, then space exploration must be continued. Further reading: Cadburg, Robert, Space Race. New York: Harper Collins, 2006; Jet Propulsion Laboratory Web site. http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov (cited February 2006); Morrison, David. Exploring Planetary Worlds. New York: Scientific American Library, 1993; Nicolson, Iain. The Road to the Stars. Melbourne: Cassell Australia, 1978. Thomas A. Lewis
Spain Post–World War II Spain was still affected strongly by the results of the Spanish civil war of 1936–39. Francisco Franco’s authoritarian regime continued to censor the press and did not abide by a constitution. After the defeat of fascist governments in World War II, Franco did mitigate some fascist tendencies within his government, stressing instead the Roman Catholic Church, the monarchy, and society as the corporatist pillars of Spain, but not enough to prevent economic isolation by other international actors. However, at the same time industrialization and economic development contributed to a contrary force of secularization. The corporatism of the state thus began to depend more and more on Franco. Spain’s colonial influence would not succeed Franco, either. The Spanish ended their rule over Spanish Morocco in 1956, and over the rest of their African colonies over the next two decades. In 1968 Spanish Guinea gained independence and renamed itself Equatorial Guinea. Right before Franco died, Morocco’s King Hassan II took advantage of Spain’s weakness and took over Spain’s only remaining colony—Western Sahara— in the Green March. However, despite these colonial losses, Franco did pass on to his successor, King Juan Carlos, the beginnings of an economic and political liberalization that would reap the “Spanish Miracle.” Indeed, the hierarchical nature of the state did not persist after Franco’s death in 1975. Juan Carlos appointed Prime Minister Adolfo Suárez to rush in an era of democratization through legislation sometimes referred to as the “new Bourbon restoration.” Suárez was elected in 1977 under the Unión de Centro
Democrático party. After the elections, the Spanish constitution was drafted in 1978 by a committee made up of the deputies of most of the main political groups. It was signed by the king in 1979. Suárez’s power weakened, however, and he resigned as president and party leader on January 29, 1981. Finding a successor was difficult in what became a very tense political and economic climate due to economic struggle, difficulty creating a new territorial organization of Spain, Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (or ETA, a Basque separatist organization) terrorist attacks, and the army’s lukewarm support of democratic institutions. In this political atmosphere, democratic governance in Spain was tested by a 1981 coup that was called 23F and El Tejerazo. Antonio Tejero, with 200 armed officers from the Guardia Civil, stormed the Spanish Congress of Deputies as it was electing Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo the new Spanish president. Tejero and the officers held the cabinet and parliament hostage. No one was harmed and the coup ended largely because the king called upon the army to abide by the orders of the democratically elected civilian authorities. Social democratic rule began in 1982 with Felipe González’s Socialist Party winning the elections. Spain’s democratic rule was fairly stable from that point until 1996. Domestic reforms under González’s administration included the legalization of abortion, education reforms, and increased personal freedoms. Also during this era, Spain made many advances in integrating back into the international economic and political community. It joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Economic Community in 1986. With integration came some important changes for the Spanish economy. Technological and industrial investment in the country increased, despite its persistently high unemployment rate. Ironically, although Spain was able to make progress in international integration, it still suffered from regional separatism and regional groups seeking autonomy from Spain. In 1996 González was defeated, in part due to government corruption, and José María Aznar’s Popular Party (PP) took over. During the PP’s term, Spain’s economy benefited from high domestic demand and export-led growth. It continued down the path of European integration, joining the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and adopting the euro in 1999. Yet again Spain suffered from internal divisions. ETA attacked tourists and Spanish officials again in 1999. Nevertheless, the PP won the 2000 elections. The attacks continued. In 2001 army Lieutenant Colonel Pedro Antonio Blanco García was assassinated. An enormous street
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demonstration of over 1 million Spaniards protesting the assassination occurred the next day. Unfortunately, the killings continued. After some ETA members were killed in a car bomb that August, the ETA retaliated with a series of the bloodiest attacks since 1992, which included the assassination of Supreme Court justice José Francisco Querol Lombardero, his driver, bodyguard, and a bystander, and injuries to 60 others. In 2003 Aznar supported the U.S. “War on Terror” in the Iraq War, possibly resulting in the March 11, 2004, train bombings in Madrid. Nearly 200 people were killed and over 1,500 injured. Although the government blamed ETA, al-Qaeda operatives carried out the attacks. In the elections that followed, the PP lost to the Socialist Party. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero took over as prime minister. Aznar, however, had decided not to run, despite not being barred from running for a third term. Zapatero immediately withdrew Spanish troops from Iraq. Under his administration, Spain approved a same-sex marriage law with the support of a majority of the population. In contrast to Aznar, Zapatero’s relations with the United States were strained. However, he maintained good relations with the United Nations and the European Union. See also Morocco; Portugal (1930–present). Further reading: Anderson, Wayne. The ETA: Spain’s Basque Terrorists. New York: Rosen Publishing Group, 2002; Cowans, Jon. Modern Spain: A Documentary History. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003; Tortell, Gabriel, and Valerie Herr. The Development of Modern Spain: An Economic History of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. Ashley Thirkill-Mackelprang
Sri Lanka The island nation of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka gained independence from British rule on February 4, 1948. The country followed a nonaligned foreign policy and participated in various world bodies such as the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Asian Development Bank. Sri Lanka also became a member of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). For 10 years the country was ruled by the United National Party (UNP) of Don Stephen Senanayake (1884–1952). After facing hardship under a socialist economy, Sri
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Lanka became the first country in South Asia to liberalize its economy. The government passed the 1956 Sinhala Only Act, which made Sinhala the official language. The onslaught of Singhalese nationalism marginalized the Tamils. The Tamils, living in the north and east, constituted about 18 percent of the population. They feared dominance by the Sinhala majority, who were 74 percent of the population. A separatist movement was launched, resulting in confrontation between the two communities. The concept of Tamil Elam (homeland) was broached by several Tamil militant groups. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), under the leadership of Velupillai Prabhakaran, was emerging as the leading militant group. A large-scale riot broke out in 1977, and in the 1980s civil war broke out. Terrorist attacks by the LTTE and riots became common. Indian premier Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by Tamil militants in the state of Tamil Nadu, India. The president of Sri Lanka, Ranasinghe Premadasa, also was assassinated in Colombo. After two decades of bloodshed, there was a formal cease-fire in February 2002 under the auspices of the government of Norway. Chandrika Bandaranaike of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party became president. Meanwhile, the country was devastated by a tsunami in 2004. A lasting solution to the ethnic conflict had proved illusory, and large-scale human rights violations were committed by the army and the LTTE. Civil war began again in 2005, and violence continued in 2006. Peace talks were held in February and April 2006 in Geneva, but these did not produce any concrete results. In July and August 2006 there was heavy fighting in the Muslim-dominated Muttur region. See also Tamil Tigers. Further reading: Rotberg, Robert I. Creating Peace in Sri Lanka. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1999; Tambiah, Stanley J. Sri Lanka: Ethnic Fratricide and the Dismantling of Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991; Woost, Michael D. and Deborah Winslow. Economy, Culture, and Civil War in Sri Lanka. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004. Patit Paban Mishra
St. Lawrence Seaway Begun in 1954 and completed in 1959, the St. Lawrence Seaway, a wonder of engineering for its time, is a 2,342mile-long series of canals, locks, and seaways constructed
jointly by Canada and the United States to allow oceangoing vessels access to the Great Lakes. It streamlined shipping and created additional hydroelectric facilities along its route. The seaway opened to commercial traffic on April 25, 1959. The total cost was $470 million, of which Canada provided $336.2 million and the United States $133.8 million. Canada’s St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation manages 13 locks, while the U.S. St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation manages two locks. The hydroelectric facilities are administered by Ontario Power and the New York State Power Authority. Depending on weather conditions and ice management, the seaway is generally open from April to mid-December, approximately 250 days per year. There are seven locks between Montreal and Lake Ontario, a distance of 187 miles. Each lock is 766 feet in length, 80 feet wide, and 30 feet deep, and all channels are dredged to a depth of 27 feet. To ensure proper depth it was necessary to flood some areas, displacing and relocating residents of river towns. Technically not part of the seaway, the two Soo Locks in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, are slightly larger and connect the upper Great Lakes with Lake Superior. Ninety percent of the freight shipped consists of bulk commodities. Westbound traffic primarily carries cargoes of steel, coal, and iron ore; 40 percent of eastbound cargo is grain. Inter-lake trade accounts for four times the tonnage handled for international markets. In recent years, proposals by the U.S. and Canadian governments to deepen the seaway and enlarge its locks have met with resistance. Those who seek to expand seaway traffic point out that the St. Lawrence project is operating at only half the capacity envisioned when the project began in the 1950s, while another, even older, water “highway,” the Panama Canal, is achieving full capacity and more. Opponents of the seaway’s expansion fear damage to water quality in the world’s greatest freshwater system and point to damage already caused by invasive animal and plant species introduced by shipping on the seaway. Studies claim that 182 nonnative species have entered the Great Lakes system, two-thirds of them since 1959 when the seaway opened. Further reading: Lesstrang, Jacques. Seaway: The Untold Story of North America’s Fourth Coast. Seattle: Salisbury Press, 1976; Mabee, Carleton. The Seaway Story. New York: Macmillan Company, 1961. John M. Mayernik
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student movements (1960s) The most striking result of the baby boom was the activism of college students during the 1960s. In the United States, the initial impetus for student activism came from the Civil Rights movement. As the decade wore on, students in the United States and elsewhere found more elements of the “establishment” that required political action: the Vietnam War, the draft, and charges that universities were complicit with the military. The first major student protest organization, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), was founded in 1960 by Ella Baker, who had organized the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for Martin Luther King, Jr. She believed that existing civil rights organizations were out of touch with African-American students who were willing to push the movement further. Also in 1960 Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) emerged from the Student League for Industrial Democracy, created in the 1930s to try to build a political left in Great Depression America. SDS became the central institution of what would soon be called the New Left. In June 1962, 59 SDS members and sympathizers, including some SNCC members, assembled at an AFL-CIO camp in Port Huron, Michigan, to develop a political manifesto. The resulting Port Huron Statement was written by student Tom Hayden. It suggested that U.S. universities should become the locus for a new movement concerned with empowering individuals and communities. SNCC was the first of these organizations to achieve national prominence. Its members, who had initiated sit-ins at segregated lunch counters, took part in the Freedom Rides of 1961, testing federal court orders desegregating interstate bus terminals. They conducted voter registration programs in several southern cities and demonstrated against segregation. In 1964 SNCC and CORE (the Congress of Racial Equality) staged “Freedom Summer,” during which white college students were invited to teach African-American children and assist with voter registration efforts in Mississippi. During that summer, three student activists, whites Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman and African-American James Chaney, were murdered by white racists. The University of California, Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement began when students returning from Freedom Summer found their university restricting political activity on campus. White resistance to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act led activists in both SDS and SNCC to see themselves as allies of revolutionaries in
Students demonstrate against the war in Vietnam during the March on the Pentagon in 1967.
the rest of the world and to move further left. Stokely Carmichael (later Kwami Ture), who became chairman of SNCC in 1966, coined the slogan “Black Power” to express African-American pride, which had the effect of driving white activists out of the organization. SDS and other white-dominated activist groups had, by this time, become outraged at the escalation of the war in Vietnam. The first “teach-in” against the war took place at the University of Michigan during the spring of 1965. In April a march on Washington organized by SDS drew 20,000 protesters. It was the first of many. Concentration on antiwar politics had an unforeseen consequence. In 1964 SNCC staffers Mary King
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and Casey Hayden anonymously circulated a position paper noting male dominance in movement organization. Later, they publicly raised the importance of feminism in civil rights and antiwar groups. Some men in the movement saw women’s issues as a trivial distraction from their own concerns about the draft. King and Hayden’s work led to women’s caucuses. Between 1964 and 1969 many of the nation’s college campuses became stages for student activism, whether connected to the war or not. Black students occupied buildings at the University of Chicago, Brandeis, and Cornell (armed with rifles). University officials were held hostage at Columbia University, Trinity College, and San Fernando Valley State College (now California State University Northridge). Students stormed boards of regents meetings and occupied buildings and offices. In May 1968 youth uprisings in Paris nearly brought down the government of Charles de Gaulle. A general strike led by elite Sorbonne university students, joined by many French workers, decried France’s education system and its role in the Vietnam War. That same year, Czechoslovakia’s “Prague Spring” tried to implement “socialism with a human face” in the teeth of Soviet domination. In August Warsaw Pact troops crushed the movement, while in the United States riots erupted between Chicago police and student activists during the Democratic National Convention. Violence escalated in 1970 when National Guard units shot and killed students protesting the Vietnam War at Kent State and Jackson State Universities, touching off protests on many other campuses. But by then SNCC and SDS were collapsing. SDS had splintered at its 1969 convention into a number of groups, the best known of which, the Weathermen, took its name from a Bob Dylan song. Renamed the Weather Underground, this group is best remembered for a Greenwich Village explosion in which three members blew themselves up while assembling explosives. Broad-based student activism declined after the draft was discontinued in 1973. See also counterculture in the United States and Europe. Further reading: Carson, Clayborne. In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981; Miller, James. Democracy Is in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994. David Miller Parker
suburbanization, U.S. Suburbanization describes a process by which U.S. city dwellers moved from central cities into residential areas characterized by single-family homes with lawn space. It is generally associated with the period directly following World War II, but suburbanization is a much older process. The term “suburb” has been in use since 1800. Although it originally applied to a pastoral existence, connected to but outside the central city, it is now associated with the basic ideals of U.S. family life. The form of the U.S. city has been changing since the development of the steam engine. As the railroad replaced the stagecoach as a means of transportation, it became possible to live farther from the center of the city while still working in the central business district. The streetcar accelerated this outward movement, and automobiles accelerated it even more, creating “bedroom communities” with access to commuter trains, buses and ferries, and parking lots. By 1940 only 20 percent of U.S. citizens lived in the suburbs, which were regarded as communities for the upper class. A shortage of housing in cities with significant concentrations of war-related industries led to the building of suburban communities to house workers during World War II, but the diversion of resources for the war effort created a national housing shortage for returning servicemen. Ninety-seven percent of all new singlefamily dwellings built between 1946 and 1956 were surrounded by their own plots. The period saw the cottage industry of single-family home construction transformed into a major manufacturing process. The most famous example of this is Levittown, which is named after the family who built it. In 1946 Levittown was 4,000 acres of potato fields in Long Island, New York; by 1950 it was a town with 17,400 separate houses. Similarly the developers of Lakewood, in Los Angeles County, California, purchased 3,500 acres in 1949 and had built and sold 17,500 houses by 1953. The new suburbs were characterized by low density, architectural monotony, and economic and racial homogeneity. Soon businesses, especially retailers, opened branch stores in the suburbs, creating shopping malls to reach consumers who had moved there. The suburbs continue to grow as the urban/suburban relationship in the nation’s metropolitan areas evolves. This is evident in the explosive growth of suburbia in the formerly rural hinterlands of cities in the southern and southwestern United States, now known as the Sun
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Belt, which attract homeowners with promises of fine weather, large acreages, and air-conditioning. See also interstate highway system, U.S. Further reading: Baxandall, Rosalyn, and Elizabeth Ewen. Picture Windows: How the Suburbs Happened. New York: Basic Books, 2000; Hayden, Dolores. Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820–2000. New York: Pantheon Books, 2003. David Miller Parker
Sudanese civil wars (1970–present) The Sudan has been the theater for several major intercommunal conflicts since the 1950s. During the British administration of the Sudan under the Condominium Agreement, North and South Sudan had been administered separately. The north, with historic ties to Egypt, was predominantly Muslim and Arabic speaking. The population in the south was primarily black and a mixture of Christians and animists, speaking a variety of African languages. The British restricted Sudanese living north of the 10th parallel from traveling farther south, and the Sudanese living below the 8th parallel from traveling north. This helped sow the seeds of future conflicts. The first Sudanese civil war broke out shortly before Sudanese independence in 1956 and lasted until 1972. The Addis Ababa Agreement was signed in 1972, ending hostilities and giving the southern Sudan considerable self-rule and autonomy. The peace held until President Jaafar Muhammad Numeiri broke the agreement in 1983 by trying to create a federated Sudan. President Numeiri moved to implement Islamic sharia law over all of the Sudan, including the Christian population. Newly discovered oil reserves in the southern territory also provided a motive for more northern interference in the region. Led by Colonel John Garang, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) launched an all-out war against northern domination, further weakening Numeiri. The Numeiri regime was overthrown in a militaryled coup in 1985, but the civil war continued as Islamist forces gained power in Khartoum. Negotiations for a cease-fire ended in 1986 when SPLA forces shot down a civilian aircraft. The National Islamic Front (NIF) then joined the northern forces to ensure that Islamic law was retained. This endangered hopes for future peace talks because one of the primary demands of those in the south had been the repeal of Islamic law.
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Southern forces retained control over most of the southern countryside, and in 1989 further negotiations collapsed over the issue of Islamic law. In 1991 the tide changed when the Ethiopian government was deposed, depriving the south of its main ally and arms supplier. Inter-rival fighting among groups in the south further weakened the resistance against the north. As almost all of the fighting had occurred in southern provinces, the region had experienced massive population dislocation, food shortages, and destruction. Throughout the 1990s, the south was torn apart by inter-tribal warfare as well as numerous offensives from the north. With substantial international pressure, the 2003 peace talks made progress, and the two sides signed the Naivasha Treaty on January 9, 2005. The treaty guaranteed autonomy for southern Sudan for six years, after which a referendum was to be held regarding complete independence. Monies from oil reserves were to be divided equally between the north and south, and both north and south armies were allowed to remain in place. The peace treaty was imperiled after John Garang, the new co-vice president, was killed in a helicopter crash. Riots broke out in the south, where many believed the regime in Khartoum had been responsible for Garang’s death. However, a tentative peace held, and Salva Kiir Mayardit became the new SPLA leader and Sudanese vice president. The United Nations (UN) established the UN Mission to Sudan under UN Security Council Resolution 1590 in March 2005; the mission was to protect and promote human rights in southern Sudan and to help to maintain the peace. However, an uprising in the western Darfur region put the mission and Sudanese unity in danger. The Darfur region, predominantly Muslim, rebelled in 2003, accusing the government of neglect; it used this as a basis for secessionist claims. The central government launched a brutal campaign of scorched earth against Darfur and aligned itself with Arab militias known as the Janjaweed. Many in Darfur fled into neighboring Chad, thereby creating an international crisis. By 2006 the government in Khartoum claimed victory and signed the Darfur Peace Agreement supervised by the African Union Mission in Sudan, but this failed to halt hostilities, and the conflict continues. These ongoing civil wars have decimated large sectors of the Sudanese economy. The fluctuating price of cotton, the primary cash crop, has further weakened Sudan’s economic prospects. The discovery of small oil reserves raised hopes, but with the ongoing violence, it is difficult to gauge the positive effects of this resource. Severe labor shortages and the emigration of
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large portions of the educated elite in both the north and south have also had negative impacts on Sudan’s recovery. Therefore it seems likely that the Sudan will remain a volatile and unstable region for the foreseeable future. Further reading: Johnson, Douglas Hamilton. The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003; Prunier, Gerard. Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005. Katie Belliel
Suharto, Haji Mohammad (1921– 2008) Indonesian president
The second president of Indonesia after Sukarno, General Haji Mohammad Suharto was born June 8, 1921, in Kemusuk Argamulja, central Java. His military career began with the Japanese occupation from 1942 to 1945. After Sukarno’s declaration of independence in 1945, Suharto fought against the Dutch and later joined the Indonesian National Army. In the violent upheaval of 1965, he was instrumental in crushing the Partai Kommunist Indonesia (PKI, or Indonesian Communist Party) coup and rose rapidly after this event. As Sukarno’s political authority weakened, Suharto began to strengthen his position. By an executive order in 1966, Sukarno was forced to grant emergency powers to Suharto. Under Suharto Orde Baru (New Order) was established, emphasizing economic development and social harmony. Relations with Western countries improved and confrontation with Malaysia ended, but relations with China deteriorated. Indonesia became a founding member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The military became powerful and extended its hold over economic management, which led to large-scale corruption. Suharto also restricted political party activity. By March 1967 he was the acting president and he was elected president on March 21, 1968. He continued to hold the office until 1998, being reelected unopposed five times. His Golkar Party also won every election during this time. Suharto’s regime suppressed secessionist movements and added Western New Guinea, a former Dutch colony under United Nations (UN) temporary executive authority after a stage-managed election in 1969. However, he had to deal with the Organisasi Papua Merdeka (OPM, or Free Papua Movement) and its guerrilla campaign against the government of Indonesia.
Suharto also faced problems from the province of Aceh after the formation of the Gerakan Aceh Merdeka (GAM, or Free Aceh Movement), which demanded independence in 1976. He suppressed the rebellion by force and martial law, but discontent remained. East Timor was a former Portuguese colony. Suharto ordered an invasion and incorporated it into Indonesia in 1976. A guerrilla war against Indonesian occupation continued amid reports of brutality by the army. In 1998 talks between Portugal, Indonesia, and the United Nations resulted in a plebiscite for the East Timorese people. However, the Indonesian army and a pro-Indonesian militia unleashed a reign of terror in the region that killed more than 1,300 people and sent 300,000 people fleeing into West Timor. Suharto faced challenges on the economic front also, as his profligate spending and corruption forced the economy to falter. Beginning in the 1990s, opposition to his authoritarian regime gained intensity. The financial crisis of Asia in 1997 resulted in the plummeting value of the Indonesia currency, which lost 80 percent of its value in 1998. Riots escalated after May 1998, causing him to resign on May 21, 1998. He was replaced by Vice President Jusuf Habibie. Suharto was placed under house arrest in 2000. In 2003 the Human Rights Commission of Indonesia began to examine atrocities committed under his regime. By then Suharto was in poor health, often hospitalized, and therefore spared prosecution. Indonesia returned to democratic government after his fall. Suharto died in Jakarta on January 27, 2008, from multiple organ failure. Further reading: Aspinall, Edward. Opposing Suharto: Compromise, Resistance, and Regime Change in Indonesia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005; Challis, Roland. Shadow of a Revolution: Indonesia and the Generals. Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton Publishing, 2001; Dijk, Kees Van. A Country in Despair: Indonesia Between 1997 and 2000. Leiden: KITLV Press, 2002; Elson, R.E. Suharto: A Political Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; ———. Suharto: Politics and Power in Modern Indonesia. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Patit Paban Mishra
Sukarno, Ahmed
(1901–1970) Indonesian leader A charismatic leader, Ahmed Sukarno left an indelible imprint on the history and politics of Indonesia. Born
on June 6, 1901, he was the most important leader of the nationalist movement and the first president of the Indonesian Republic. After graduating from Bandung Technische Hoogeschool in 1926, Sukarno joined the nationalist movement and was instrumental in establishing the Perserikatan Nasional Indonesia (PNI, Indonesian Nationalist Union) on July 4, 1927. The PNI voiced the indigenous sentiment against colonial rule. He was imprisoned and exiled, returning to Jakarta after the Japanese occupation in 1942. Sukarno had a flair for flamboyant oratory. Sukarno enumerated the Pancasila, or five moral postulates, on June 1, 1945, as guidelines for governing Indonesia: nationalism, internationalism, consent, social justice, and belief in God. Unable to suppress the independence movement, the Netherlands signed the Hague Agreement of December 27, 1949, ending its colonial rule. Sukarno and Muhammad Hatta became president and prime minister, respectively. The new constitution provided for a parliamentary form of government in which president Sukarno was a mere figurehead, with his rivals dominating the political scene. There was political instability and the collapse of five successive cabinets in six years. There were revolts against the central authority in West Java, Kalimantan, south Sulawesi, and Sumatra. Sukarno criticized the ineffective government and began to assert his authority gradually from 1955, instituting a “guided democracy” in 1957 that replaced democratic with authoritarian rule. On July 5, 1959, Sukarno reinstituted the 1945 constitution, assuming executive authority, ruling by decree. In July 1963 Sukarno was made president for life by a compliant assembly. From the early 1960s Sukarno directed his attention to grandiose plans of projecting Indonesia into the international arena and himself as leader of the nonaligned bloc. Examples of his image building were his hosting of the 29-nation Afro-Asian conference at Ban dung in 1955. He also hosted the Asian Games and the games of the Newly Emerging Forces (NEF). In
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1957 he nationalized Dutch businesses. In 1963 he annexed the western half of Papua New Guinea, or Dutch New Guinea. Sukarno broke off relations with the newly formed Malaysia in 1963 and attempted to destabilize it by guerrilla attacks. Indonesia withdrew from the United Nations after the admission of Malaysia. Sukarno then consulted communist nations with Moscow responding with foreign aid. Domestically, inflation, corruption, deficit spending, and victimization of the Chinese business community led to economic ruin. Inflation reached a staggering proportion, and the economy was on the brink of collapse. The attempted coup in September 1965 sealed Sukarno’s fate. General Haji Mohammad Suharto took leadership in crushing the coup on September 30. As a result, the political authority of Sukarno was fatally weakened by Suharto, who became the president in March 1967. Sukarno, stripped of presidential powers, was banned from any political activity and remained under house arrest in Jakarta until his death on June 21, 1970. There was a revival of the popularity of Sukarno in 1980s, because many people had become disenchanted with the dictatorial military regime of Suharto. They honored his struggle against colonialism. Megawati Sukarnoputri, his eldest daughter, became the symbol of the pro-democracy movement that opposed Suharto, and she was elected president of Indonesia from 2001 to 2004. Further reading: Hering, Bob. Soekarno: Founding Father of Indonesia 1901–1945. Leiden: KITLV Press, 2002; Leifer, Michael. Indonesia’s Foreign Policy. Boston and London: Allen and Unwin, 1983; Legge, John D. Sukarno: A Political Biography. Singapore: Archipelago Press, 2003; Saltford, John. United Nations and the Indonesian Takeover of West Papua, 1962–1969: The Anatomy of a Betrayal. New York: Routledge, 2003; Sardesai, D. R. Southeast Asia: Past and Present. New Delhi: Vikas, 1981. Patit Paban Mishra
T Taiwan (Republic of China) The Nationalist (Kuomintang, or KMT) government of the Republic of China (ROC) lost the civil war against the Chinese Communist Party in 1949 and retreated to Taiwan, an island province that had been seized by Japan in 1895 and returned to China after World War II. About 2 million people from mainland China fled to Taiwan, joining about 6 million people who had earlier migrated to the island, mainly from the Fujian (Fukien) province across the Taiwan Strait. Chiang Kai-shek, who was elected president of China under the constitution in 1947 and who had stepped down in 1949, resumed his presidency in 1950. He was reelected president four more times and died in 1975. Chiang ruled Taiwan in an authoritarian manner and invoked martial law because of the threat of invasion from the communist-ruled People’s Republic of China (PRC). With the failure of the George Marshall mission to mediate the Chinese civil war, the United States became a bystander in the Chinese conflict until the invasion of Communist North Korea (later aided by “volunteers” from the PRC) of pro-Western South Korea in 1950. The U.S. Seventh Fleet then began to patrol the Taiwan Strait to prevent a PRC invasion of Taiwan, and in 1952 the United States and the ROC signed a Mutual Defense Treaty (ended in 1979), which provided protection for Taiwan. By 1954 Chiang’s government had completed a successful equitable land reform that transferred ownership to cultivators. Resource-poor Taiwan relied on social
and educational reforms to produce a literate citizenry. U.S. economic aid helped to reform all aspects of the economy so that an even greater rate of growth became possible when it ended in 1964. Industrial development began with labor-intensive light industries that capitalized on a literate workforce. Infrastructure building allowed the economy to shift to heavy, and later high technology, industries. In 1978 the National Assembly elected chiang ching-kuo (son of Chiang Kai-shek) president; he was reelected in 1984 and died in 1989. Chiang Ching-kuo accelerated the rapid economic development of Taiwan, called an economic miracle by the rest of the world. He began political reforms that ended martial law, granted freedom of the press, and allowed opposition political parties. The Chiang “dynasty” ended with Chiang Ching-kuo’s death (he had disavowed succession by his family members), and he was followed by his vice president, Lee Teng-hui. Lee continued democratization and won two more terms, the second by a universal suffrage vote (rather than election by the National Assembly) under an amended constitution. In the 2000 election, the opposition Democratic Progressive Party candidate won the presidency. Taiwan thus added to its accomplishments the “political miracle” of a peaceful transformation from one-party rule to multiparty democracy without violence. With a population of 23 million, it continued to be one of the most advanced and prosperous nations in Asia. However, Taiwan’s political future remained unclear because of the PRC’s stated goal of national unification, by force if necessary. 411
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See also democratic progressive party and chen shui-bian (Chen Shui-pien). Further reading: Clough, Ralph N. Reaching Across the Taiwan Strait, People-to-People Diplomacy. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993; Hu, Jason C., ed. Quiet Revolutions on Taiwan Republic of China. Taipei: Kwang Hwa Publishing, 1994; Lee Wei-chin and T. Y. Yang, eds. Sayonara to the Lee Teng-hui Era, Politics in Taiwan, 1988–2000. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2003; Taylor, Jay. The Generalissimo’s Son: Chiang Ching-kuo and the Revolutions in China and Taiwan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur
Taliban Osama bin Laden was born on March 10, 1957, in Riyadh, into a family who owned a construction dynasty estimated worth $5 billion by the mid-1990s. When the Soviets invaded afghanistan in 1979, they began a war in which 1 million people were killed and 5 million were sent into exile. During the war, osama bin laden, then 22, lobbied his family and friends to support the cause of the Afghan freedom fighters, the mujahideen, and made several trips to Pakistan, where he continued his fundraising work. During this time the United States also supported the cause of the mujahideen against the Soviets. The reagan administration authorized the CIA to establish training camps for the mujahideen in Afghanistan and Pakistan and asked King Fahd of Saudi Arabia to match U.S. contributions. King Fahd instructed the minister of intelligence, Turki al-Faisal, to raise money from private sources and Faisal, knowing of bin Laden’s efforts toward the cause, entrusted bin Laden with the task of raising money. Besides raising money for the effort, bin Laden helped encourage Arab volunteers to fight in Afghanistan against the Soviets. He kept a database of his volunteers; the word database translates to Arabic as al-qaeda. When the Soviets left Afghanistan in 1989, the United States withdrew its support for the mujahideen, and the country was plunged into chaos and civil war. When Iraq, built up as a major military power by the United States against Iran, invaded kuwait, the United States sent thousands of troops into Saudi Arabia. The U.S.-Saudi alliance was criticized by bin Laden, who objected to the presence of U.S. troops on land sacred to Muslims. Bin Laden began publicly criticizing the
Saudi regime. As a result, he was placed under house arrest. He convinced King Fahd that he had business to take care of in Pakistan as a means of escaping the country, and eventually found refuge in Sudan with hasan al-turabi, the leader of the country’s Islamic Front. While in Sudan, bin Laden opposed the presence of U.S. troops in Somalia, and al-Qaeda affiliates in Yemen bombed two hotels housing American troops in transit to Somalia. Following an attack by al-Qaeda on the World Trade Center in 1993, the Saudi government froze bin Laden’s assets in the country and stripped him of his citizenship. Meanwhile, in 1994, the Taliban (translated as “students”), a small group of graduates from madrassas (schools of Islamic learning) led by Mullah Muhammad Umar, took control of the city of Kandahar, Afghanistan. The Taliban were able to seize leaders of warring factions, and called for the city to disarm. Fatigued by two years of anarchy, the city willingly agreed to the restoration of order. The Taliban announced that it was their duty to set up an Islamic society in Afghanistan, and gained popular support. By 1996 they had taken Kabul and established a government willing to provide sanctuary to Osama bin Laden and to accept his support of their regime. In 2000, bin Laden was linked to the attack on the American guided missile destroyer USS Cole in Aden Harbor, Yemen, and on september 11, 2001, al-Qaeda was held responsible by the United States for the attack on the twin towers and the Pentagon. While the Taliban regime fell as a result of U.S. attacks on Afghanistan on October 10, 2001, the United States was unable to capture Osama bin Laden or destroy the Taliban. Further reading: Bergson, Peter. Holy War, Inc: Inside the Secret World of Osama Bin Laden. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001; Haqqani, Husain. Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Brookings Institution Press, 2005; Rashid, Ahmed. Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000; Schulze, Reinhard. A Modern History of the Islamic World. New York: NYU Press, 2002. Taymiya R. Zaman
Tamil Tigers The Tamil Tigers, officially known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE, concentrate operations
predominantly in Sri Lanka with the goal of achieving a separate state for the majority Tamil regions located in north and east Sri Lanka. The rebel group gains much of its internal support from the Tamil agricultural workers and dislocated Tamil youths. Tamil Tiger operations have targeted both military and political objectives since the early 1970s. The United States, the European union, Canada, and India all consider the Tamil Tigers a terrorist organization. Under the leadership of its founder, Velupillai Prabhakaran, the LTTE argues that they are freedom fighters. Until the 1970s the Tamils insisted upon autonomy but did not resort to violent methods. After a long period of attempts to negotiate, Tamils adopted the belief that the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lankan government was unwilling to negotiate. A number of militant organizations were created—including the New Tamil Tigers and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. In 1979 the LTTE began a campaign of attacking military targets, including a July 1983 killing of 16 army soldiers that led to the killing of thousands of Tamil civilians. In response to the violence, LTTE membership dramatically increased. By 1984 the LTTE had begun higher intensity attacks and created a naval unit called the Sea Tigers. In 1987 a special elite unit of LTTE members known as the Black Tigers was formed. By 2001 the LTTE inexplicably dropped its call for a separate Tamil state and reduced its demands to regional autonomy. Norway negotiated a cease-fire, which as of mid-2006 was tenuous at best. In the summer of 2006 calls for a “Final War” for Tamil Eelam independence emerged. The LTTE, in addition to its military activities, provides a host of government services. The LTTE’s de facto government funds schools, hospitals, police stations, courts, and other municipal services. The LTTE informal government operates under the precepts of socialism. The LTTE also has a political wing, the Tamil National Alliance, although formal attempts have not been made by the LTTE to create political parties. External support for the Tamil Tigers has come from a number of Indian regimes. That support ended with a LTTE associate’s assassination of Indian prime minister rajiv gandhi. In addition the international arms of the Tamil Tigers, located in London and Paris, have facilitated a number of purchases of weaponry. Funding for activities originates in expatriate Tamil communities in the West. Other fund-raising activities include extortion and illegal trade as well as legitimate business fronts and charities. Many terror analysts note that part of the Tamil network includes cargo ships. This has prompted concerns over the use of the fleet in terror operations.
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Very few Tamil rebels are captured alive. This is because of a rigorous training regime that includes political indoctrination emphasizing the importance of not being captured. Hence Tamil recruits typically wear a capsule of cyanide around their necks and are encouraged to commit suicide rather than face capture. In addition, the LTTE were one of the first modern terrorist groups to encourage suicide bombings. Much has also been written concerning the LTTE practice of recruiting children to fight in the rebellion. The rebel organization has participated in both a conventional war and attacks targeting civilians. The Tamil Tigers have also been accused of ethnic cleansing. Specifically, the Tamil Tigers attempted to remove all non-Tamil residents from the Tamil state of Jaffna in 1990. Further reading: Brogan, Patrick. World Conflicts: A Comprehensive Guide to World Strife since 1945. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1998; Bullion, Alan J. India, Sri Lanka and the Tamil Crisis 1976–1994. New York: Pinter, 1995; Laffin, John. The World in Conflict: War Annual 8. London: Brassey’s, 1997; O’Ballance, Edgar. The Cyanide War: Tamil Insurrection in Sri Lanka, 1937–88. London: Brassey’s, 1990. Matthew H. Wahlert
Tashkent Agreement The Tashkent Agreement of 1966 brought a temporary end to the 1965 war between India and Pakistan and was important subsequently in regulating negotiations over the disputed territory of Kashmir. The united nations (UN) had organized a ceasefire in 1965 when it became clear that the fighting had the possibility of endangering large population centers. After 17 days of fighting, neither side wished to resume hostilities owing to the vulnerability of their people, the lack of ammunition and supplies, and the lack of war goals that could be held. Arms suppliers in the United States and the United Kingdom as well as in China were unwilling to provide more weapons. Consequently, all parties were amenable to finding a means of diplomatically resolving the confrontation. Soviet prime minister Alexei Nikolaevich Kosygin invited both sides to a conference at Tashkent in the southern Soviet Uzbek Republic. The subsequent agreement was signed by the president of Pakistan, mohammad ayub khan, and the Indian prime minister, lal bahadur shastri, on January 10, 1966. Unfortunately,
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Shastri died the following day of a heart attack. The main provisions included the withdrawal of all troops to their prewar positions, the restoration of diplomatic relations, the promise not to intervene in the internal affairs of the other side, and the agreement to hold discussions concerning various social and economic issues. The oversight of the withdrawal of forces was conducted by the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) and the United Nations IndiaPakistan Observation Mission (UNIPOM). These missions were successfully concluded. The permanent end to war and the renunciation of terrorist activities in Kashmir were not included in the final treaty, and both India and Pakistan suffered from some measure of internal disorder. In the case of Pakistan, unrest forced the resignation of Ayub Khan, the head of a military government, in 1969. Meanwhile, Shastri was succeeded by indira gandhi, whose administration was troubled by right-wing opposition. The two countries were at war again in 1971 as part of the secession of East Bengal from Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh. See also indo-pakistani war (kashmir). Further reading: Edwardes, Michael. “Tashkent and After.” International Affairs 42, no. 3 (July 1996); Schofield, Victoria. Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War. 2nd rev. ed. I.B. Tauris, 2003; Talbot, Ian. Pakistan: A Modern History. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005; United Nations. “United Nations India-Pakistan Observation Mission (UNIPOM)—Background.” http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/ co_mission/unipombackgr.html (cited July 2006). John Walsh
Tlatelolco massacre (1968) In one of the most important and controversial episodes in postwar Mexican history, on October 2, 1968, police and army units violently suppressed a demonstration in Tlatelolco Square in the heart of Mexico City. The government’s version of events differed starkly from those of eyewitnesses and the version that gained currency among much of the populace. The crackdown contributed to a growing crisis of legitimacy for the ruling party, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), fueling popular sentiments that the PRI was corrupt, dictatorial, and antidemocratic, and tarnishing Mexico’s image on the eve of the country’s hosting of the 1968 Summer Olympics.
The roots of the October 1968 events in Tlatelolco have been traced to the upsurge in student and worker democratic and anti-PRI activism from the late 1950s, including the Teachers’ Movement in 1958; the Railway Workers’ Movement in 1958–59; demonstrations in support of the Cuban Revolution (1959); a massive student strike at the National University (UNAM, spring 1966); and protest movements in the states of Puebla (1964), Morelia (1966), and Sonora and Tabasco (1967). More immediate antecedents include the government’s mobilization of an antiriot paramilitary squad, the granaderos, in response to street fights between two Mexico City schools in July 1968, and again in response to student protests commemorating the anniversary of fidel castro’s 26th of July Movement. Tensions mounted throughout August as students held huge demonstrations at the UNAM and the National Polytechnic Institute. The events prompted the formation of a National Student Strike Committee, which issued a list of demands that included disbandment of the granaderos and release of all political prisoners. An estimated 500,000 people, mostly students and workers, participated in antigovernment demonstrations in Mexico City’s central square (Zócalo) on August 27, to that date the country’s single largest mass protest. Law enforcement agencies responded with tanks and armored cars, killing at least one student. In mid-September, President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz ordered 10,000 army troops to occupy the UNAM campus. Some 500 protesters were jailed, and in the ensuing weeks tensions throughout Mexico City ran high. The exact sequence of events on the evening of October 2 in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas (Plaza of the Three Cultures) in the District of Tlatelolco, where 5,000 to 10,000 protesters had gathered, remains disputed. The next day the government claimed that terrorists had opened fire on the police from a nearby building and that police had responded to the unprovoked attack. Most newspapers at the time reported from 20 to 28 protestors killed. Eyewitnesses recalled with near unanimity that police and army units had instigated the violence, dropping flares from helicopters before spraying machine-gun and small-arms fire indiscriminately into the crowd, killing hundreds. The British newspaper The Guardian estimated after “careful investigation” that 325 were killed, a figure cited by Mexican writer Octavio Paz as the most plausible. In the ensuing days and weeks, thousands were jailed. Memories of Tlatelolco remained fresh into
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the 1990s and after, evidenced by a 1997 congressional investigation into the massacre and the 2006 indictment of ex-president and then-interior minister Luis Echevarría for his role in the events, which remain a festering wound in the nation’s collective memory. Further reading: Ecker, Ronald L. “The Tlatelolco Massacre in Mexico.” www.hobrad.com/massacre.htm (cited February 2007); Poniatowska, Elena. Massacre in Mexico Translated by Helen R. Lane. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1975. Michael J. Schroeder
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre (1881–1955) scientist, mystic, writer
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was one of the most eloquent 20th-century voices for religion in an increasingly secular world. As a distinguished paleontologist and a Jesuit priest, he tried to synthesize evolutionary science with the incarnation of Christ. His ideas were new, speculative, and bold enough to figure into deliberations as diverse as the founding of the United Nations and the formulation of several Vatican Council documents. Even today his name is cited for a spiritual perspective on the convergence of human communication due to the Internet. He was born in France into a devout Catholic family of 11 children in 1881. His father was an intellectual and a farmer, and his mother was a great-grandniece of Voltaire. Teilhard’s father provided his son a keen interest in science, and his mother an inclination toward mysticism. He received a top-notch Jesuit education and entered their novitiate program by 1899. By 1911 he was ordained a priest after doing assignments in England and Egypt. World War I interrupted further studies in geology, and he saw action on the front lines. His close calls with death prompted him to consider a more speculative approach to science. After the war he brilliantly defended his doctorate at the Sorbonne in 1922. Soon thereafter he accepted the chair of the geology department at the Institut Catholique. From this platform he now began to publicize ideas about the synthesis of science and religion, and the resulting controversy cost him his license at the Institut and forced him abroad to do his research and study. For almost the rest of his career he lived abroad, almost as in a self-imposed exile. Most of that time he
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spent in China (1926–46), and there he collaborated with the Chinese Geological Survey and helped to discover the Peking Man skull. He wrote his important books, The Divine Milieu and The Human Phenomenon, during these years. For one brief time after World War II he returned to France, but the Jesuits refused to allow him to take an academic position lest he receive more critical scrutiny. He was banned from lecturing in public or publishing his writings. He decided to go to New York in 1951. Lonely and suffering, he died on Easter Sunday, 1955, and is buried in a Jesuit cemetery there. From a scientific point of view it is difficult to establish the methodology and provability of Teilhard’s ideas. He has clearly advanced the fields of geology, stratigraphy, and paleontology, with a supreme competence in the areas of China and the Far East. However, his dominant interest and the source of his infamy was in “anthropogenesis,” a new study focusing on the evolutionary position of humanity. He proposed that evolution had entered a new phase with the emergence of humanity, whereby complexity and consciousness converged and spiritualized evolution. The final development of humanity he termed the “Omega Point,” and he connected this perfection with Christ. In 1962 the Catholic Church issued a warning against the uncritical acceptance of Teilhard’s theories, though it did not question his scientific contributions or his integrity of faith. The best way of categorizing his unsystematized though eloquent speculation is as process theology, or perhaps even as a form of Christian pantheism. Further reading: King, Ursala. Spirit of Fire: The Life and Vision of Teilhard de Chardin. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1996. Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre. The Human Phenomenon. Brighton, UK and Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 1999; Mark F. Whitter
Teresa of Calcutta, Mother (1910–1997) Albanian religious leader
Small of stature but solid in fortitude, Mother Teresa was born on August 26, 1910, in Skopje, Albania. The youngest of the children of Nikola and Dran Bojaxhiu, she was baptized Gonxha Agnes. Her father’s sudden death when Gonxha was eight left the family in
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Mother Teresa’s life bore witness to the joy of loving, the dignity of every human person, and the surpassing worth of faith in God.
difficult financial straits and left her mother as her guide for character and vocation. Her local Jesuit parish also contributed strongly to her formation. At 18, desiring to become a missionary, Gonxha joined the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Sisters of Loretto) in Ireland. There she received the name Sister Mary Teresa after St. Thérèse of Lisieux. In December she departed for India, arriving in Calcutta on January 6, 1929. After making her first profession of vows in May 1931, Sister Teresa was assigned to the Loretto Entally community in Calcutta and taught at St. Mary’s School for girls. On May 24, 1937, she made her final vows. From that time on she was called Mother Teresa. She continued teaching at St. Mary’s and in 1944 became the school’s principal. On September 10, 1946, during the train ride from Calcutta to Darjeeling for her annual retreat, Mother Teresa said she experienced a divine love for souls, a force within her that motivated her for the rest of her
life. She felt called to establish a religious community, the Missionaries of Charity sisters, dedicated to the service of the poorest of the poor. Nearly two years passed in discernment before Mother Teresa received permission to begin. On August 17, 1948, she dressed for the first time in a white, blue-bordered sari and left Loretto to enter the world of the poor. On December 21 she went for the first time to the slums to find and serve among “the unwanted, the unloved, the uncared for.” After some months she was joined by a number of her former students. On October 7, 1950, the new congregation of the Missionaries of Charity was officially established in Calcutta. By the early 1960s Mother Teresa began to send her sisters to other parts of India. In February 1965 she opened a house in Venezuela. It was soon followed by foundations in Rome and Tanzania and, eventually, on every continent. During the years of rapid growth the world began to focus its attention on Mother Teresa. Numerous awards honored her work. An increasingly interested media began to follow her activities. Her humble stature and effective work also attracted the attention of many intellectuals and celebrities, many of whom were touched by her spirit. Mother Teresa’s life bore witness to the joy of loving, the dignity of every human person, the value of little things done faithfully, and the surpassing worth of faith in God. But only after her death was it revealed that her interior life was marked by a painful experience of feeling separated from God. At times she grappled with profound doubts and fears about her work and her faith. Despite increasingly severe health problems, she continued to govern her society of sisters and respond to the needs of the poor and the church. By 1997 Mother Teresa’s sisters numbered nearly 4,000 and were established in 610 foundations in 123 countries. In March 1997 she handed on her duties as superior to a newly elected successor. On September 3, 1997, Mother Teresa died. She was given a state funeral by the government of India, and her body was buried in the headquarters of her order. Her tomb quickly became a place of pilgrimage. Less than two years later, in view of Mother Teresa’s widespread reputation of holiness and the miracles reported as connected to her intercession, Pope John Paul II permitted official discussions about her canonization as a saint to begin. On October 19, 2003, he beatified Mother Teresa before a crowd of at least 300,000. Further reading: Egan, Eileen. Such a Vision of the Street: Mother Teresa—The Spirit and the Work. New York: Image Book (Doubleday), 1986; Muggeridge, Malcolm. Something
terrorism
Beautiful for God: Mother Teresa of Calcutta. New York: Harper and Row, 1971. Brian Kolodiejchuk
terrorism Terrorism—attacks on civilians and noncombatants for political purposes—has an ancient history. In earlier eras, terrorism was often religiously motivated. In the first century c.e. Jewish Zealots fought the Romans; the Assassins, a Shi’i sect of Islam, killed Muslims who disagreed with their practices in the 11th century; and Hindu Thugees in India killed innocents as part of ritualistic practices from the 7th to the 19th century. From the 18th to the late 20th century, most terrorists were motivated by nationalist or political causes. Contemporary terrorism is systematic, political, conveys a message, and generates fear. Terrorism may be committed by a state or by individual groups, although some dispute the use of the term for governmental actions. In
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English the term terrorism derives from the French revolutionary reign of terror under Maximilien Robespierre, when thousands were sent to their deaths, often at the guillotine, in 1793–94. After World War II nonstate groups often adopted terrorist tactics to achieve political goals. Terrorism was usually the tactic of the weak and disaffected who lacked access to or possession of high technology and sophisticated weapons of war. In the modern era, the media and instant communications provided terrorists with ready platforms to publicize their programs and grievances. Publicity on a global scale permitted terrorists to have a psychological impact far beyond single deeds, thereby greatly magnifying their effects. In their struggles against imperial powers, Third World liberation movements sometimes adopted terrorist tactics by attacking civilians as well as colonial armed forces to achieve national independence. Third World leaders often argued that these tactics were no less “terrifying” or horrific than the bombing of villages, the use of napalm, or the imprisonment of thousands in concentration camps. However, governments tended
The Pentagon in Washington, D.C., was damaged by a terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, concurrently with attacks on the World Trade Center using hijacked airliners filled with passengers. Nearly 3,000 people lost their lives in the attack.
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to apply the term terrorist only to those groups they disliked or opposed, and to ignore or downplay those groups or countries that used similar tactics against their own citizens or enemies. During the 1960s–70s leftist groups were responsible for numerous terrorist attacks in Europe. The Baader Meinhof Gang, militant German anarchists, bombed U.S. military installations and police stations and attempted to assassinate Alexander Haig, the supreme Allied commander of NATO, as well as bankers and media moguls. After most of their leaders had been imprisoned or had died, the Meinhof Gang’s attacks ended in the 1990s. The communist Italian Red Brigades also kidnapped and killed leading establishment figures. In its struggle against the British, the nationalist Provisional irish republican army (IRA) planted bombs in shopping malls and killed Lord Louis mountbatten, first earl Mountbatten of Burma, and narrowly missed killing British prime minister margaret thatcher. Similarly, the nationalist Basque party (ETA) attacked Spanish leaders and placed bombs at targets with heavy civilian use. In the Middle East small Palestinian Marxist-Leninist groups skyjacked civilian airliners in dramatic and well-publicized attacks that brought world attention to the Palestinian national cause. The palestine liberation organization (PLO) also launched terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians as well as the military. At the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, Palestinians attacked and killed Israeli athletes. Israel retaliated by killing Palestinian leaders in Beirut and in Europe. The Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), under Abdullah Ocalan, mounted a separatist insurgency against turkey; the PKK placed bombs on buses and other civilian sites and was outlawed by the Turkish government. In Asia the nationalist tamil tigers in Sri Lanka attacked civilians, and the Japanese Red Army, a leftist paramilitary group, launched attacks in Europe and elsewhere. In 1995 the group Aum Shinrikyo released the poison gas sarin in the Tokyo subway. Terrorism escalated throughout much of South America and Latin America in the 1970s–80s. During the 1970s the Argentina military junta and right-wing death squads terrorized and killed opponents. In Chile General augusto pinochet’s regime tortured and “disappeared” opponents. The Pinochet regime was also implicated in the car bombing assassinations of a Chilean diplomat and Pinochet opponent, Orlando Letelier, and a U.S. colleague in downtown Washington, D.C., in 1976. During the same period, the Shining Path terrorized villagers and political leaders in Peru,
while narco-terrorism by criminal drug cartels killed judges, police, and others in Colombia. Similarly, leftwing guerrilla forces and right-wing death squads killed thousands of civilians as well as religious and nongovernmental volunteers from the international community in El Salvador. The government in Guatemala used terrorism to repress its Amerindian population. From the 1960s onward a wide variety of political groups opposing the vietnam war and the conservative establishment or struggling for civil rights in the United States also adopted terrorist tactics. The Weathermen and other groups kidnapped high-profile individuals, bombed military and research installations, and sometimes killed law enforcement officers. In 1995 terrorists from the far right bombed a federal office building in Oklahoma City, killing over 100 people and wounding 400. There was a revival of religiously motivated terrorism beginning in the later part of the 20th century. As Yugoslavia split apart, sectarian violence escalated. Similarly, clashes among Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs in India proliferated. Prime Minister indira gandhi was killed by her Sikh bodyguard, and the Mumbai stock exchange was bombed. The 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran provided the impetus and support for numerous Islamist groups in the Middle East, including hizbollah in Lebanon and hamas in the occupied Palestinian territories of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Both of these groups used suicide bombers in an attempt to achieve their goals. When their governments failed to provide the means for legitimate political dissent or jobs, many disillusioned Muslim young people around the world joined Islamist organizations that used encouraged jihadis (fighters of holy war) to use terrorism to oust corrupt regimes and establish regimes based on sharia, Islamic law. Many Islamic groups were hostile to the West, particularly the United States. Much of their anger was fueled by the spread of Western culture, which threatened or undermined old traditions and practices. Many young jihadis gained military training and experience fighting with the taliban and other Islamic mujahideen groups against the Soviet occupation in afghanistan in the 1980s. After the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan, the Taliban managed to wrest power from its rivals and established an extreme theocracy. Its leader, Mullah Omar, provided a safe haven for one of the most extreme Islamic groups, al-qaeda, which was led by a disaffected Saudi Arabian, osama bin laden. In 1998 bin Laden issued a fatwa (religious proclamation) urging jihad against the United States.
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Al-Qaeda members placed bombs that killed hundreds in Nairobi, Kenya, and attacked a U.S. military ship in Yemen. On suicide missions al-Qaeda members skyjacked planes that crashed into the world trade center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on september 11, 2001. These were the most devastating terror attacks that the United States had ever experienced on its home territory. The United States and coalition forces retaliated and successfully overthrew the pro–al-Qaeda Taliban regime in Afghanistan; however they failed to destroy either the Taliban or alQaeda. Osama bin Laden managed to escape and continued to orchestrate terror attacks against U.S. forces and supporters. These included suicide bomb attacks on trains in Madrid, Spain, and the transit system in London, England. Further reading: Barber, Benjamin R. Jihad vs. McWorld: Terrorism’s Challenge to Democracy. New York: Ballantine, 1996; Gerges, Fawaz A. The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005; Sinclair, Andrew. An Anatomy of Terror: A History of Terrorism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004; Whittaker, David J. The Terrorism Reader. London: Routledge, 2002. Janice J. Terry
Thatcher, Margaret baroness Thatcher of Kesteven (1925– ) British prime minister
Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first woman prime minister and leader of the Conservative Party, helped reverse the economic decline of her country. Even her enemies grudgingly respected the strong-willed “iron lady.” She rejected the “consensus” politics that had characterized Britain since World War II in favor of polarizing “conviction” politics. During her 10 years as the head of the British government, she created a successful free-market economy, but at a high price: deindustrialization of many old factory towns and, for several years, massive unemployment. Strongly nationalistic, Thatcher fought for Britain within and sometimes against the european union. She was lucky that the main body of the Labour Party moved to the left and Labour moderates broke away to form their own party; she defeated her divided opponents at general elections without
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ever winning over a majority of the voters. She also was lucky to have the opportunity to fight a short, successful, and very popular war with distant Argentina, whose brutal military dictatorship had seized a sparsely populated and almost unknown British colony, the Falkland Islands. Labour eventually accepted her basic policies. She succeeded in changing the language of political discourse. Except for those from a few stubborn socialists, proposals for the nationalization of major industries disappeared from the debate over public policy. In part because Thatcher was personally abrasive, she was controversial in her own Conservative Party. It was a rebellion among her nominal supporters that ended her political career. According to rumor, moreover, she did not get along with the other important woman in the British government, Queen Elizabeth II. Intelligence and hard work, not family connections, explain Thatcher’s rise to power. Her principles owed much to the middle-class values of her upbringing. Thatcher was born Margaret Hilda Roberts on October 13, 1925, in Grantham, a small town in eastern England. Her father was a grocer, and the family lived over his shop. Active in civic affairs, her father served for many years on the city council and at one point held the title of mayor. After attending local state schools Margaret Roberts studied chemistry at Somerville College, a women’s college that was part of Oxford University. Already politically minded, she was elected president of Oxford’s student Conservative organization in 1946, the year after Labour had crushed her party in the general election that followed the defeat of Nazi Germany. After university she worked for several years as a research chemist. In addition, she stood for Parliament, always for seats that were hopeless for her party. During her political campaigns she met Dennis Thatcher, a wealthy businessman, whom she married in 1951. She left her first career as a research chemist to study law. In 1953 she gave birth to twins, Carol and Mark. Thatcher was in her mid-30s when in 1959 she was elected to the House of Commons for the safe Conservative seat of Finchley in north London. Two years later she was appointed to a junior position in the Harold Macmillan government as parliamentary secretary at the ministry of pensions and national service. Thatcher’s first cabinet office came in the Edward Heath government. In 1970 she was appointed minister for education. As part of broader cuts in spending she eliminated free milk for
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British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher led an uncompromising conservative government in the United Kingdom during the 1980s.
school- children. The Labour Party attacked her as the heartless “Thatcher, the milk snatcher.” Heath’s failure to stand up to the trade unions successfully and his defeat in two 1974 general elections cost him the support of many Conservatives. Despite his weakness, his principal colleagues were reluctant to challenge him. Thatcher, a midlevel figure in the Conservative Party with limited ministerial experience, dared in 1975. After the first ballot Heath withdrew, and on the second ballot Thatcher was elected leader of the Conservative Party. Four years later, the Conservatives won the general election, and Thatcher became prime minister. She also led her party to victory in the next two general elections. Her policies during her more than a decade as prime minister came to be called “Thatcherism.” She acknowledged that many of her ideas came from an older Conservative politician, Sir Keith Joseph. He argued that Britain needed to revive its entrepreneurial spirit. Thatcher became prime minister during a two-sided economic crisis: a depression accompanied by rising prices. She made her first priority fighting double-digit inflation. She cut government spending, with higher education suffering particularly hard. She increased interest rates and sales taxes and eventually income taxes too. Manufacturing shrank, and several million workers lost their jobs. It took years for this bitter medicine to cure runaway inflation, but it did. Some members of Thatcher’s own party thought that the human cost of her policies was unacceptable. Convinced that the welfare state had ruined Britain, Thatcher wanted to encourage individualism and discourage reliance on the state. Consequently, she made it easy for tenants in council houses (public housing) to
buy their homes. Pressured by an increase in rent, hundreds of thousands did. As property owners, they were more inclined to vote Conservative. Committed to competition and capitalism, Thatcher regarded the nationalized industries as a deadweight handicapping the British economy. In the early 1980s she sold off minor parts of the state’s array of industries, such as the railroad hotels, but it was not until the mid-1980s that privatization became dramatic. At this time Thatcher sold the telephone system, the gas industry, the principal automobile and truck manufacturers, the steel industry, and water companies. Thatcher worried that the power of Britain’s militant trade unions crippled the economy. She decided to tame them. In 1984 Parliament enacted legislation that required a majority vote by secret ballot for a legal strike. In the same year, the leader of the coal miners challenged the management of one of the last nationalized industries. He hoped to block the closing of unprofitable mines. He used outside militants to intimidate working miners. These tactics offended public opinion. Worried about their own jobs, few other unions supported the miners. After nearly a year, the strike collapsed. As a result of competition from oil and natural gas, the coal mining industry soon shrank to almost nothing. Priding herself on her decisiveness and rarely conciliatory toward opponents, Thatcher did not care how many people she alienated. She rejected compromise as weakness. Victory over Argentina in the falklands war was perhaps her only success that nearly everybody applauded. She refused any compromise when members of the irish republican army, imprisoned in Ulster, started a hunger strike to be recognized as political prisoners. Ten IRA men died of starvation. Labour controlled many local councils, including that of greater London. Thatcher considered their spending profligate, and so she had Parliament abolish the troublesome councils. She regarded the European Community without enthusiasm. Protective of British sovereignty, she was suspicious of the trend toward economic and political centralization within the European Union. In contrast to her ambivalence toward Europe, she was a staunch ally of the United States. She was particularly close to President ronald reagan. Although they were much alike in their economic and foreign policies and their insistence upon law and order, Thatcher did not share Reagan’s concern for moral issues in politics. She voted to decriminalize homosexuality and to legalize abortion. Thatcher’s relationship with the United States was, in part, the result of political realism. The world’s
most powerful nation was a useful ally. Her realism also showed in her conciliatory relationship toward mikhail gorbachev, the last ruler of the Soviet Union. She recognized the importance of the reforms that he advocated in changing the nature of communism in his powerful country and the flexibility that he showed outside the Soviet Union. Unlike Reagan, she was not so entranced with Gorbachev as to propose mutual nuclear disarmament, but she did think the Soviet leader was somebody with whom she could “do business.” In her last years as prime minister Thatcher blundered politically, which gave an opening to her numerous enemies within the Conservative Party. In her biggest mistake, she proposed a reform of local government finance widely denounced as an unfair poll tax. Except for the well-off, nearly all households would pay more than they had in the past. Perhaps because she was preparing for war against Iraq in alliance with the United States,Thatcher paid insufficient attention to the political situation at home. She also erred by making provocatively anti–European Union remarks that caused her foreign secretary to resign. One of her old enemies, a former defense secretary, challenged Thatcher for the party leadership in late 1990. When she failed to win on the first ballot, she withdrew and threw her support to one of her loyalists, John Major. After Major became Conservative Party leader and prime minister, Thatcher quickly alienated her one-time favorite. Calling herself a “good back-seat driver,” she interfered too much, undermining the new prime minister’s authority. In retirement Thatcher took a nonhereditary peerage (baroness Thatcher of Kesteven) that made her a member of the House of Lords. She also wrote her memoirs. She outraged public opinion by visiting the former Chilean dictator augusto pinochet while he was under house arrest in Britain. Most people believed that he was guilty of torturing and murdering opponents in his home country. By the first years of the 21st century, Thatcher’s physical and mental health began to fail. She rarely made public appearances and no longer gave speeches. Her husband died in 2003, and her children sometimes proved to be an embarrassment. Her son, Mark, became involved in an abortive coup against an African government. Her daughter, Carol, appeared on a widely viewed and undignified “reality” television program. According to her, Thatcher suffered from a form of dementia that destroyed her short-term memory. Further reading: Green, E. H. H. Thatcher. London: Hodder Arnold, 2006; Letwin, Shirley Robin. The Anatomy
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of Thatcherism. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1993; Reitan, Earl A. The Thatcher Revolution. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003; Seldon, Anthony, and Daniel Collings. Britain Under Thatcher. New York: Longman, 1999; Thatcher, Margaret. The Path to Power. New York: HarperCollins, 1995. David M. Fahey
Third World/Global South The term Third World applies to those nations in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the Western Hemisphere that mostly secured independence from the imperial powers after world war ii. In the cold war construct the First World, dominated by the United States, also included Western Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. These nations were wealthy, highly industrialized, urban, largely secular, democratic, and had capitalist economies. The Second World consisted of the Soviet bloc, dominated by the Soviet Union. These nations were industrialized but not as wealthy as the First World; they were secular, authoritarian, and had socialist economics. The Third World nations, consisting of two-thirds of the world’s population, were poor, rural, and agrarian, with traditional societies. After the breakup of the Soviet bloc and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the terms no longer applied and because most of the nations of the Third World were south of the equator the term Global South came to be used as a collective label for these nations. The gap between rich and poor nations grew in the 20th century. As the Indian prime minister jawaharlal nehru commented, “The poor have to run fast just to keep up.” Third World countries were caught in a cycle of poverty, with low incomes and low production. After independence many became dictatorships and attempted to improve their economies, usually unsuccessfully, by adopting socialist systems on the Soviet state capitalist model. Economists often referred to the poor developing nations as low-GDP (low Gross Domestic Product) countries, meaning they produced little in the way of goods and services. Countries in the Global South adopted a wide variety of methods to break out of the cycle of poverty. In China Mao Zedong led a socialist revolution and mobilized the masses, but only with privatization after his death did the Chinese economy begin to take off. India, the world’s most populous democracy, adopted a capitalist approach; India also successfully applied the technology of the green revolution, the use of
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hybrid seeds to increase agricultural productivity. At the beginning of the 20th century, India suffered major famines but by the end of the century it was exporting foodstuffs. India and many other poor nations also invested heavily in education. In southeast Asia educated workers became the backbone of industrialization and the development of high-tech firms. Other nations built huge development projects, − dam in Egypt and the Three Gorges such as the aswan Dam in China. Following Western advice in the 1950s and 1960s, many Third World nations concentrated on industrialization, to the detriment of the agricultural sector. That, along with ecological changes, droughts along wide bands of Africa, civil wars, political corruption, and instability, contributed to large famines and mass starvation in many African nations. In the Middle East oil-producing nations joined a cartel, the organization of petroleum exporting countries (OPEC), to gain increased revenues from their major resource. They then used the new revenues to build modern infrastructures. Kuwait was able to provide a complete welfare system from cradle to grave for its small population. Other countries, such as the “little dragons” in Southeast Asia (Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore), attracted foreign businesses and industries. Many nations in South America and Africa also borrowed vast amounts of money from private and public Western banks, such as the World Bank, to bring much-needed capital into their countries. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) also provided assistance in welfare, food, education, and healthcare. Brazil used foreign loans to create new industries and provide jobs, but it, along with many other countries, became ensnared in a web of indebtedness that was impossible to repay. By the 1990s rich nations promised but often failed to deliver increased foreign aid and to forgive or restructure the debts of these nations, especially the poorest in Africa. Other nations had some modest successes in adopting appropriate technology to establish small, inexpensive grassroots projects. Population growth also contributed to economic problems. In Kenya the population doubled every 18 years and in Egypt every 26 years, compared to every 92 in the United States. By 2000 the world’s population had exceeded 6 billion, from 1 billion in 1800. It was expected to reach 9 billion by 2054. In poor countries high infant mortality contributed to the desire to have many children in hopes that at least some would survive to adulthood and be able to care for their parents, especially their mothers, in their old age. To limit its population China adopted a draconi-
an one-child policy and strictly enforced it through its totalitarian system. India adopted numerous approaches in attempts to limit population growth; these were often accepted by urban elites, but peasants continued to value large families. In societies where women had low status, having children, especially boys, brought status and the hope of some security. The educational status of many improved, and literacy rates improved, although in many countries boys enjoyed higher rates of education than girls. While programs to empower women were often successful, they were also resisted by traditional and religious leaders. Women’s work continued to be undervalued and underpaid. Child labor was yet another problem. Globalization and privatization in the late 20th century actually caused some nations to become poorer as prices for agricultural goods and raw materials dropped. In some Global South nations, such as India, a few people became millionaires, but most remained desperately poor. In the 1990s, incomes in 54 nations actually declined, and in Zimbabwe life expectancy fell from 56 to 331, compared to over 80 in the United States and Japan. Disease, especially AIDS, contributed to further economic and social problems, particularly in many southern African countries. At the 2000 Millennium Summit, world leaders agreed to institute programs aimed at cutting in half the number of people living on under $1 a day and at halving the number of people suffering from hunger by 2015. Five years later the commitments of the donor nations, especially the United States, had fallen short of the promises made, and it remained uncertain whether the goals would be met. Further reading: Adjibolosoo, Senya B.-S. K., and Benjamin Ofori-Amoah, eds. Addressing Misconceptions About Africa’s Development: Seeing Beyond the Veil. New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1998; Dorraj, Manochehr, ed. The Changing Political Economy of the Third World. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1995; Harrison, Paul. Inside the Third World. 3d ed. London: Penguin, 1993. Janice J. Terry
Tiananmen Square massacre Throughout the 20th century, Tiananmen Square in central Beijing, China, has been the center of protest movements, the first being on May 4, 1919, when students and others demonstrated against the Treaty of Versailles,
which had handed the formerly German-occupied Chinese city of Qingdao to Japan. Another large protest was held there in April 1976 by supporters of the former premier Zhou Enlai, who had recently died. In 1989 student protest movements started in Tiananmen Square following the April 15 death of Hu Yaobang, who had been general secretary of the Chinese Communist party. Some of the students felt that Hu Yaobang had been made a scapegoat for government failures in 1987. By April 18, some 10,000 students were in Tiananmen Square taking part in protests in front of the Zhongnanhai, the seat of the government. Three days later, there were 100,000 students and others in the square, and on May 4 some 100,000 students and workers marched through Beijing, demanding a formal dialogue between the student leaders and the government and the removal of all restrictions on the media, which the government rejected. The protest reached its first peak on May 13, just before the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev came to visit Beijing. Some of the protestors urged for the reforms that Gorbachev had introduced in the Soviet Union and saw him as a possible ally, but Gorbachev diplomatically refused to become involved. Early in the morning of May 19, Zhao Ziyang, the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, urged the students to end their protests and a hunger strike they had started. However, the demonstrations continued, and on May 30 a statue that became known as the “Goddess of Democracy” was erected in the square. It was not long after that protests and strikes started taking place in factories and in other parts of China. On May 27 some 300,000 people gathered in Hong Kong to protest in support of the students in Beijing. By this time the Communist Party leadership was split as to how to deal with the protestors. Premier Li Peng urged for a hardline stance, supported by President Yang Shangkun, with Zhao Ziyang still urging for a moderate approach. Although Yang Shangkun’s presidency was a largely ceremonial role, it did, however, mean that he was the commander in chief of the armed forces. Martial law had been declared on May 20, and soldiers rushed to Beijing late in the evening of June 3. Tanks entered the square, and the accompanying soldiers cleared the square of demonstrators by the early morning. On June 5, in a famous photograph by Jeff Widener, a lone protestor stood in front of tanks advancing on the square, and the tank stopped and tried to drive around him. The lone demonstrator, never identified, was later pulled into the crowd. Nobody knows how many were killed in Tiananmen Square on
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those two days in June and in the subsequent crackdown around the country. Casualty estimates range from 200 civilians and several dozen soldiers—made by the mayor of Beijing, defending the actions of the soldiers—to estimates from foreign commentators that many thousands died. Further Reading: Calhoun, Craig J. Neither Gods Nor Emperors: Students and the Struggle for Democracy in China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994; Feigon, Lee. China Rising: The Meaning of Tiananmen. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1990. Geoffrey Golson
Tibetan Revolt (1959) Tibet’s political ties with China began in the seventh century. It was annexed into the Yuan dynasty by Kublai Khan and came under tight Mongol control in the 13th century. Under the subsequent Ming dynasty (1366–1644), China conferred titles on local Tibetan leaders but exercised only loose supervision over them. The Qing (Ch’ing) dynasty (1644–1911) exerted considerable control over Tibet during its prime, stationing imperial commissioners and garrisons in its major centers. The Qing rulers also honored Tibet’s spiritual leaders the Dalai and Panchen Lamas. Tibet became a pawn in international politics in the late 19th century; with the Qing dynasty in decline both Great Britain and Russia became interested in controlling Tibet and interfered in its internal politics, which neither China nor local Tibetans could resist. Weak Chinese central governments in the republican period were too beset by other problems to deal effectively with Tibet, which enjoyed autonomy. No country, however, recognized Tibet as an independent nation. An important goal of the People’s Republic of China was to assert control over Tibet. The Panchen Lama, the second leader of Tibet who was headquartered in Tashilhumpo, accepted Chinese sovereignty. The dalai lama’s government in Lhasa vainly tried to obtain international assistance in resisting China in 1950. His representatives then signed a Seventeen-Point Agreement in Beijing (Peking) in 1951 that allowed the Tibetans to maintain their traditional religious (Tibetan Buddhism), political (theocracy), and economic (large estates owned by monasteries and aristocrats) systems, under Chinese control. The Dalai Lama visited Beijing in 1954, had conversations
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with Chinese leader Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung), and expressed optimism that he could “work out a synthesis of Buddhist and Marxist doctrines.” The Chinese Communists, however, looked at the traditional Tibetan Buddhist society, the theocratic government, and the landed estate system with extreme distaste and began a program to dismantle both. By 1957 armed resistance had begun in eastern Tibet that culminated in an uprising in Lhasa against the Chinese government in 1959. Realizing that the revolt was suicidal and fearing that he would be captured by the Chinese, the Dalai Lama and his advisers fled Lhasa in disguise in March 1959 and headed for the Indian border. After putting down the revolt, China implemented a program that brought Tibet more in line with the rest of the country. Chinese-Indian relations, warm after the establishment of the People’s Republic, had become antagonistic by 1959, partly over Tibet. Popular sentiment in India sympathized with the Tibetans. In April the Dalai Lama and his party crossed into India and were granted political asylum. The Indian government also gave political asylum to 13,000 Tibetan refugees and allowed the Dalai Lama to establish a government in exile in Dharmasala, a Himalayan town near the Chinese border. These acts further soured Chinese-Indian relations and exacerbated a border dispute that negotiations between the premiers of the two countries failed to resolve, and that culminated in a border war in 1962. See also Nehru, Jawaharlal. Further reading: Dalai Lama. My Land and My People. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962; Goldstein, M. C. A. A History of Modern Tibet. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989; Grunfeld, A. Tom. The Making of Modern Tibet. Rev. ed. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1996; Schell, Orville. Virtual Tibet, Searching for Shangri-La from the Himalayas to Hollywood. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2000; Teufel Dreyer, June. China’s Forty Millions: Minority Nationalities and National Integration in the People’s Republic of China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985. Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur
Tito, Marshal (Josip Broz) (1892–1980) Yugoslav leader
Josip Broz was born on May 7, 1892, and died on May 4, 1980. His life was caught up in some of the
most momentous events of the 20th century. He fought in World War I, took part in the russian revolution, became a leader of guerrilla resistance to the German occupation of Yugoslavia, and after World War II until his death he was the leader of the country. During this period, he defied joseph stalin over the communist consolidation of power in Yugoslavia. “Tito” was a pseudonym that he adopted during his underground activities, and it was with this name that he became well known during World War II. Tito was born in the village of Kumroves, some 50 kilometers northwest of Zagreb in what was then Austria-Hungary. His native village is located in the valley of the river Sutla, which served as a boundary between Croatia and Slovenia. Tito’s father was a Croatian peasant, and his mother was Slovenian from a village across the river. In 1907, at the age of 15, he left home and went to the town of Sisak (Croatia), where he became an apprentice to a locksmith. Tito completed his apprenticeship in 1910 and began a series of mechanic jobs, which took him to factories across central Europe. In the autumn of 1913 Tito was called up for his military service, which he did with the 25th Croatian Territorial Infantry Regiment based in Zagreb. When Austria-Hungary attacked Serbia in July 1914, Tito, already a sergeant, was sent to fight on the Serbian front. In January 1915 his regiment was transferred to Galicia in anticipation of a Russian offensive. There Tito was put in charge of a reconnoitering section operating behind enemy lines. However, during a Russian attack in April 1915, he was seriously wounded and taken as a prisoner of war (POW). It was during this time that Tito began sympathizing with the ideas of Bolshevism. In June 1917 he escaped from the POW camp and made his way to Petrograd in search of work, but the suppression of Bolshevik demonstrations forced him to flee to Finland. While attempting to cross the border he was captured and sent back to the POW camp, but he escaped on the way and arrived in Bolshevik-controlled Omsk in Siberia in autumn 1917. He enrolled in the Red Guard and applied for membership in the Communist Party. When the Bolsheviks retook Omsk in 1919, he started making his way back to Croatia. Tito returned to Kumrovec in October 1920, where he found that his village had become part of the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (changed to Yugoslavia in 1929). Upon his return he joined the newly founded Communist Party in Zagreb and became active in the union movement. During the 1920s he worked as a mechanic
in factories across Yugoslavia. In 1927 he became secretary of the Metalworkers’ Union of Croatia. His activities brought him to the attention of the police, and in August 1928 he was arrested. Upon his release from prison in 1934 Tito resumed full-time clandestine activities for the Yugoslav Communist Party. In February 1935 he was sent to Moscow for training with the Balkan Department of the comintern. He stayed there until September 1936, when he was sent back to consolidate the Yugoslav party and recruit volunteers to fight in the spanish civil war. During 1937 the factionalism within the Yugoslav Communist Party increased, and in the atmosphere of uncertainty Tito asserted his authority by setting up an interim secretariat under his leadership. Moscow offered him provisional approval in the beginning of 1939, and Tito was officially confirmed as a secretary at a party congress in October 1940. In April of 1941 the Axis powers invaded, occupied, and partitioned Yugoslavia, which triggered a civil war in the country. Tito formed the Partisan Army of National Liberation, which waged guerrilla war against the occupying forces. In the process Tito’s partisans also turned against rival guerrilla organizations, in particular the internationally recognized “Chetniks” of Draža Mihailovic´. Tito and his partisans emerged victorious from the war, and, despite his promises to form a government of national unity, he immediately began consolidating his authority and establishing communist rule over the territory of Yugoslavia. At the same time Tito was entertaining ideas of leading a Balkan federation involving Albania, Bulgaria, and potentially Greece. The prospect of a regional federation under Tito’s leadership seemed likely during 1947 and brought Tito into a direct confrontation with Stalin. In 1948 the Yugoslav Communist Party was excluded from the Cominform (the postwar name for the Comintern), and this turned Tito into the first communist leader to break with the Soviet Union. This gave him both new international prominence and domestic appeal, which helped him consolidate his position in Yugoslavia. In domestic affairs Tito promoted the principles of brotherhood and workers’ self-management (a form of market-oriented socialism), in parallel with his ongoing suppression of internal dissent. His death in 1980 was a shock for the country, and the seeming stability of Yugoslavia began to crack under the strains of national factionalism. Many commentators trace the origins of the 1990s Yugoslav dissolution to Tito’s authoritarian rule. See also Yugoslavia, breakup and war in.
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Further reading: Pawlowitch, Stevan. Tito: A Reassessment. London: Hurst, 1992; Ridley, Jasper. Tito: A Biography. London: Constable, 1994; West, Richard. Tito and the Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994. Emilian Kavalski
Togo Togo is a small, narrow republic in western Africa. Slightly fewer than 22,000 square miles, with a northsouth distance of about 340 miles, Togo is situated between ghana and Benin. The capital and largest city of Lomé is located on the western side of the 56kilometer coastline on the Gulf of Guinea. In spite of its small size, Togo’s population is diverse. There are 37 ethnic groups among its nearly 6 million people, who practice traditional religions, Christianity, and Islam. French is the official language although the African languages Ewe and Kabiyé are also taught. Togo has one of Africa’s highest rates of population growth and highest rates of deforestation. Over twothirds of the population are engaged in agriculture and lives in areas with limited safe drinking water. In addition to other serious health problems, either HIV or AIDS results in about 10,000 deaths per year. The slave trade was carried on in Togo during and after the 1600s. Germany made the territory the protectorate of Togoland in 1884 and during the next decade determined the permanent boundaries through agreements with France and Britain. The port city of Lomé was built by the Germans for shipment of goods from the interior. In 1914 Germany surrendered Togoland to British and French troops. After World War I, France received Togoland in exchange for interior land granted to the British. After World War II, the united nations gave Britain and France joint control of the territory. In 1956 British Togo became part of the Gold Coast, which later became Ghana, while French Togo moved for independence. Under the leadership of Sylvanus Olympio, the National Union Party gained control of French Togo and refused an overture to unite with Ghana. The United Nations granted membership to the new country in 1960. Three years later, Premier Olympio was assassinated in a military coup that installed Nicolas Grunitzky as president. A new constitution was drafted and approved by the nation. When the army staged a second coup in 1967, the new government, headed by Étienne Eyadéma, dismissed the legislature and threw out the constitution.
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Eyadéma and his party, Rassemblement du Peuple Togolais (RPT, or Togolese People’s Assembly), created a new constitution. In the elections that followed, Eyadéma was almost unanimously reelected president. On the 13th anniversary of his takeover of the government, Eyadéma announced the Third Togolese Republic. Unrest continued to plague Togo, and in 1986 France sent troops to help quell another attempted coup. Eyadéma was reelected to another seven-year term the same year. Eyadéma agreed in 1991 to work with a transitional government until general elections could be held. A national referendum in 1992 approved a new constitution. Among the provisions of the constitution were the establishment of multiparty elections and term limits for officials. In the 1993 election Eyadéma was still able to emerge as the victor for another term. The elections resulted in a new legislature, which demanded concessions. In 1994 he appointed Edem Kodjo prime minister of a new coalition government. Nevertheless Eyadéma was reelected in 1998 and in 2003, after the legislature removed the term limits from the constitution. When President Eyadéma died in February 2005, he was succeeded by his son Faure Gnassingbe. The succession, supported by the military but not by the constitution, was challenged by popular protest and a threat of sanctions from regional leaders. Gnassingbe easily won the elections he held in April 2005. Further reading: Cooper, Frederick, and Martin Klein. Africa Since 1940: The Past of the Present (New Approaches to African History). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; Manning, Patrick. Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa, 1880–1995. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Jean Shepherd Hamm
Torrijos, Omar
(1929–1981) Panamanian military chief General Omar Efraín Torrijos Herrera was the de facto ruler of Panama from his coup d’état of 1968 until his death in an airplane crash on July 31, 1981, after which he was succeeded by General manuel noriega. Best known for successfully negotiating a series of treaties in 1977 with the United States for the return of the Panama Canal to Panama in 2000, Torrijos (torr-EE-yos) was a staunch U.S. ally who instituted a range of popular reforms while also suppressing dissent and committing many human rights abuses during his years as
the country’s supreme military ruler. Never elected to office, Torrijos dominated Panama’s political life for 13 years, his rule representing a significant departure from the country’s previous regimes, dominated by the country’s traditional landowning and commercial elite concentrated in Panama City. Denounced by many as a false populist whose dictatorship ruthlessly crushed dissent, paid lip service to anti-imperialism, and selectively dispensed government patronage to defuse and coopt opposition, Torrijos was born on February 13, 1929, in the town of Santiago, southwest of Panama City. In 1952 he joined the U.S.-created National Guard, was promoted to captain in 1956, and attended the U.S.-run school of the americas. As a lieutenant colonel, in 1968 he and Major Boris Martínez overthrew the democratically elected president Arnulfo Arías. Torrijos cultivated the political support of the urban and rural poor, the working class, the middle class, and students through government largesse, legal reforms, and the populist, nationalist, anti-imperialist rhetoric espoused by his People’s Party (Partido del Pueblo, or PdP). Leaving existing property relations largely intact, he excluded the country’s traditional powerholders from office, dissolving the national legislature and outlawing other political parties. The high point of his rule came in the 1977 treaties with the United States, though his expenditure of political capital in securing the treaties’ passage compelled him to approve amendments to the constitution in 1978 that paved the way for a return to civilian rule. The circumstances of his death remain the topic of considerable controversy, with some implicating his successor, Noriega, in the plane crash that killed him in 1981. Further reading: Haitt, Steven. A Game as Old as Empire: The Secret World of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2007; Koster, R. M., and Guillermo Sánchez Borbón. In the Time of Tyrants: Panama, 1968–1989. New York: Norton, 1990. Michael J. Schroeder
Touré, Ahmed Sékou
(1922–1984) Guinean president Sékou Touré, a prominent West African politician and anticolonial agitator, became president of the Republic of Guinea in 1958 and ruled the country as a singleparty state until his death in 1984. Touré was born on
January 9, 1922, in Faranah and was a member of the Malinke people. Touré came from humble family circumstances. He improved his nationalist credentials by claiming the well-known anti-French resistance figure Samory Touré as his grandfather. Touré’s rise to power did not come through local social prominence and family connections but as the result of his success as a labor union organizer. His views were bitterly anticolonial, and complete independence from France was his desired goal. To achieve such a result he needed a strong political organization to promote his ambitions, and the Guinean Democratic Party (RDA), founded in 1946, became this vehicle. Through this affiliation he also linked with other emerging African politicians, such as Félix HouphouetBoigny, a later president of the Ivory Coast. In 1952 Touré assumed the party leadership, and in 1956 he was elected to the French National Assembly. Touré was committed throughout the 1950s to the drive for a total break from France, and he argued against any half measures such as partial independence under an associated Francophone union. This brought him into serious conflict with General charles de gaulle. Touré took the total independence option on October 2, 1958, when he became Guinea’s president. France responded abruptly and harshly by ending all political and economic cooperation. Relations between France and the Republic of Guinea hardened, and eventually in 1965 all links were broken. The strong stand taken by Guinea proved costly, although it fitted the anticolonial mood. It also forced Touré to look to other powers for aid and assistance. Given his early Marxist orientation and admiration for Vladimir Lenin, it was not surprising that he found a ready friend in the Soviet Union and its satellites. His country’s extensive bauxite reserves gave him a tool to maintain his position and attract international interest. He was also keenly supported by kwame nkrumah of Ghana, who in 1957 led his country to independence from Great Britain. In 1978 Touré partially mended his political disagreements with France, and in that year President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing made a conciliatory gesture and visited Guinea. Touré had for a time friendly relations with the United States, especially during the john f. kennedy administration. By the late 1960s he feared Soviet intervention, but he was equally worried that U.S. involvement might undermine his regime. This suspicion of outside interference was confirmed when Portuguese Guinea in 1970 unsuccessfully invaded Guinea. This act, some have
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argued, caused Touré to abandon democratic principles and impose a harsh one-man, one-party political system. Although elections were held during this period, there was not a serious voice of opposition. Most other local political forces were either exiled or imprisoned. Touré abandoned some of his Marxist-Socialist roots in the late 1970s in an attempt to improve the country’s economic fortunes. To maintain his power and authority, Sékou Touré did not reject all communist practices. He particularly made use of the labor camp as a tool for the state’s domination of its people. His camps became watchwords for African oppression, brutality, and human rights abuses. He created the typical personality cult found in so many communist-inspired regimes. He also loaded his regime’s offices with members of his extended family and exploited tribal rivalries to his benefit. Relations with the international monetary fund (IMF) floundered toward the end of his rule; Guinea’s foreign debt increasingly mounted, and repayments fell into arrears. This dismal performance did not dampen Touré’s ambitions for a wider political stage. In the years immediately preceding his death, he saw himself as a statesman. Touré’s health declined in the early 1980s, and he died of complications following heart surgery in Cleveland, Ohio, on March 26, 1984. Upon his death the military seized power under the leadership of Colonel Lansana Conte and a new constitution was written. Elections saw Conte assume the presidency in 1993. Although there are claims that Touré was warmly regarded by his people, the imprisonment and murder of his opponents makes this assumption hard to assess. His lasting legacy seems to be one of failure, and Guinea and its people seem to be the principal victims. Political instability and impoverishment remain the country’s fate, and international estimates list Guinea as a prime example of a failed state. Further reading: Adamolekun, Lapido. Sékou Touré’s Guinea. London: Methuen, 1976; Camara, Mohamed Saliou. His Master’s Voice: Mass Communications and Single Party Politics in Guinea Under Seko Touré. Trenton, NJ: African Research and Publications, 2005; Schmidt, Elizabeth. Mobilizing the Masses: Gender, Ethnicity and Class in the Nationalist Movement in Guinea, 1939–1958. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2005; Touré, Ahmed Sékou. Freedom Through Culture. New York: UNESCO, 1980. Theodore W. Eversole
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Trudeau, Pierre
Trudeau, Pierre
(1919–2000) Canadian politician Pierre Trudeau served as prime minister of Canada from 1968 to 1979 and 1980 to 1984. Born to an affluent Montreal family on October 18, 1919, he was educated at Jean-de-Brébeuf, an elite Jesuit preparatory school, received a law degree from the University of Montreal, and studied at Harvard University, the École des Sciences Politiques in Paris, and the London School of Economics. During a brief teaching career, he acted as the assistant professor of law at the University of Montreal from 1961 to 1965. His 1965 election to the Canadian House of Commons marked the beginning of his ascendancy in Canadian politics. Lester B. Pearson appointed him parliamentary secretary in 1966 and then minister of justice and attorney general. Trudeau won the passage of social welfare reform measures regarding gun control, abortion, and homosexuality. As the leader of the Liberal Party, he became the prime minister in 1968, largely due to his opposition to the Quebec separatist group Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ). In 1972 his Liberal Party was weakened, possessing a minority of seats in the House of Commons, and relied on the support of the New Democratic Party (NDP) to pass its agenda. Trudeau struggled against economic and domestic problems throughout the 1970s. In 1979 Trudeau lost his position as prime minister to the Progressive Conservative Party; he regained power in the election of 1980, beginning his fourth term on March 3 of that year. His administration witnessed the defeat of a referendum in May 1980 on the separation of Quebec. Trudeau’s legacy as prime minister includes his successfully patriating the Canadian Constitution from the British Parliament, an act that gave Canada the power to amend the document without the need to seek the approval of the British Crown. He had included a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guaranteed certain civil liberties, in the constitution that year. Sensitive to the linguistic preferences of Francophone Canadians, he passed laws that made Canada an officially bilingual nation and used his office to support multiculturalism. Canadian journalists named Trudeau the top Canadian newsmaker of the 20th century in 1999. In 1971, at age 51, he married 22-year-old Vancouver socialite Margaret Sinclair. Their union, which produced three children and was the subject of enormous press coverage, ended in divorce in 1984. Trudeau’s works include Federalism and the French Canadians, Approaches
to Politics, and Conversations with Canadians. Pierre Trudeau, the 15th Canadian prime minister, died on September 28, 2000. See also quebec sovereignty movement. Further reading: Axworthy, Tom, and Pierre Elliott Trudeau, eds. Towards a Just Society: The Trudeau Years. Toronto: Penguin Books, 1992; Bothwell, Robert, Andrew Cohen, and J. L. Granatstein. Trudeau’s Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Toronto: Random House of Canada, 1998; Laforest, Guy. Trudeau and the End of a Canadian Dream. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995; Trudeau, Pierre Elliott. Memoirs. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1993. Christopher M. Cook
Turabi, Hassan ‘abd Allah al(1932– ) Sudanese Islamist and politician
Hassan al-Turabi was born into a respected and educated family in the central Sudan in 1932. His father was a judge, and al-Turabi is related by marriage to Sadiq al-Mahdi, the great-grandson of the 19th-century Mahdi and a former Sudanese prime minister. He is also related by marriage to the Saudi Arabian Islamist Osama bin Laden. As a youth, Turabi received an Islamic education, but he also earned a law degree from Khartoum University and a doctorate in law from the Sorbonne in Paris. In the 1950s he joined the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood and later the Islamic Charter Front (ICF), an offshoot of the brotherhood. The party’s goal was the creation of an Islamic state as delineated in the Islamic Charter for an Islamic State. The constitution, as revised by Turabi in the 1960s, provided for the full equality of women and non-Muslims but also advocated the creation of a presidential rather than a parliamentary state. The ICF also encouraged missionary efforts to spread Islam throughout the south. Turabi opposed the military dictatorship of Ibrahim Abboud (r. 1958–64), who was overthrown in 1964. Turabi won a parliamentary seat in the 1965 elections. When Sadiq al-Mahdi became prime minister, Turabi’s influence increased until Mahdi’s political fortunes waned by 1968. In 1969 jaafar numeiri, with the support of Sudanese communist allies, successfully overthrew the parliamentary government in a military coup d’état, and Charter Front members were arrested. Turabi was jailed and then went into exile in Libya. Numeiri, struggling
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to retain power, disavowed his former communist allies and moved closer to the Islamic forces in the Sudan. Turabi was permitted to return in 1977 and was subsequently appointed attorney general. With Turabi’s support in 1983 Numeiri instituted sharia law in Sudan, thereby exacerbating relations with the large Christian population in the southern Sudanese provinces. This directly contributed to an escalation in the ongoing civil war between the predominantly Muslim government in the north and the southern Christian and animist south. During this period the brotherhood’s influence in key institutions, especially schools and the military, markedly increased. In 1985 Numeiri, who had become increasingly isolated from all his former allies, was overthrown in a bloodless coup led by General Abdel Rahman Mohammed Hassan Siwar al-Dahab. In 1991 Turabi established the Popular Arab and Islamic People’s Congress, an umbrella organization of Islamist groups, and worked to bring Sunni and Shi’i Muslims closer together. He was elected secretary-general of the Congress in 1992. In the same year Turabi toured Europe, Canada, and the United States, speaking on behalf of the creation of liberal, nonviolent Islamic states. During the 1990s he also offered protection to the radical osama bin laden after bin Laden left Saudi Arabia for Sudan. Turabi was elected to Parliament in 1996 and became speaker of Parliament under the military dictatorship of Colonel Umar Hasan al-Bashir, who had seized power in 1989. But in 2004 al-Bashir had Turabi imprisoned; he was freed in 2005. After that time, Turabi adopted a far lower public profile, and although he was thought to exercise considerable political influence in the government, his exact role or impact remained unclear. Turabi has never published a comprehensive study of his ideology, but his career has demonstrated considerable political flexibility. Under his leadership Islamist forces in the Sudan have played key roles in the Sudanese civil service, professions, and military. He also supported the export of Islamic movements to neighboring African nations in the north and east, particularly in Egypt. See also sudanese civil wars (1970–present). Further reading: El-Effendi, Abdelwahab. Turabi’s Revolution: Islam and Power in Sudan. London: Grey Seal Books, 1991; Hamdi, Mohamed Elhachmi, and Hasan Turabi. The Making of an Islamic Political Leader: Conversations with Hasan Al-Turabi. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998. Janice J. Terry
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Turkey Present-day Turkey lies in southeastern Europe and southwestern Asia and shares borders with Greece, Bulgaria, armenia, azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. It is made up of 780,580 square kilometers. It contains the Bosporus Strait, which connects, the Black and Marmara seas, and is one of the busiest shipping lanes, in the world. Turkey also has coastline on the Aegean and Mediterranean seas. Turkey has 81 provinces, and Ankara is the capital city. Turkey’s population is almost 70 million, of which a majority are Turkish, with a significant minority of kurds, as well as Armenians, Greeks, Jews, Circassians, Assyrians, Arabs, and Laz communities. Turkey is overwhelmingly Muslim. Turkey is a republican parliamentary democracy with a civil law system derived from several European legal systems such as the Swiss Code. The legislative branch is the unicameral Grand National Assembly, which contains 550 popularly elected seats. Turkey’s economy is a mix of industrial, agricultural, and commercial. The private sector is expanding, but the state still controls most basic industries and the banking, transport, and communication sectors. The main export industries are textile and clothing production, with automotive and electronic export production close behind. The main agricultural products include tobacco, cotton, grain, olives, sugar beets, pulses, citrus products, and livestock. In the 1990s Turkey’s economy suffered severe fluctuations, which culminated in financial disaster in February 2001. The international monetary fund (IMF) provides heavy backing, but the economy faces high debt and deficits. Ismet Inönü took over as president upon the death of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1938, and the Republican People’s Party (RPP) held the majority until 1950. Inönü managed to stay out of World War II until 1945, when Turkey declared war on Germany as a symbolic gesture in order to qualify as a founder of the newly forming united nations. Under the Truman Doctrine, Turkey, due to its close proximity to the Soviet Union, qualified for massive financial aid. Despite these achievements, the economy was weak, and the RPP and Inönü grew increasingly unpopular. Turkey had by then formed a multiparty system, and in 1950 the Democratic Party (Demokrati Partisi, or DP) received the majority in the elections, forcing the RPP to relinquish its 27-year majority. Celal Bayar became president, and Adnan Menderes became prime minister. The economic boom of the early 1950s strengthened Menderes and the DP’s position. By
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1952 Turkey had become a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), largely due to the fact that Turkey had immediately volunteered troops for the korean war. Turkey’s entry into NATO ensured protection along its borders and allowed NATO a closer position against the USSR. After the 1954 elections the DP became more authoritarian. Conflict was exacerbated when a Greek citizen placed a bomb at the Turkish consulate in Thessalonica. The island of cyprus, under British control and with an 80 percent Greek majority, also became a point of conflict. These two issues culminated in riots in 1955 that targeted Greek homes, shops, and businesses and wrought havoc throughout Istanbul. Many Turkish citizens of Greek origin fled Turkey after these riots. During this period, Greek nationalists of the EOKA movement on Cyprus also began a struggle against the British forces. Turkey strongly opposed British suggestions that the Greeks might be allowed to annex Cyprus. Ultimately Cyprus became an independent nation. The DP lacked the support of the military, which had been vital to the RPP. This led to the DP’s downfall in 1960. Because of training, aid, and financial support gained as a result of joining NATO, the Turkish military was a strong and powerful mechanism within Turkey. Menderes grew increasingly unpopular with the military. In 1960, the military overthrew the Menderes government. The coup was popular among students, who had been repressed by the DP. A new constitution was drawn up that justified military intervention if the ruling government acted unconstitutionally. The military was also given a role in government. In January 1961 political activity was allowed once again, and 11 parties registered for the elections to be held at the end of 1961. One of the parties, the Justice Party (Adalet Partisi, or JP) appeared to be a phoenix of the old, outlawed DP. Menderes and two of his cabinet members were tried by a military tribunal and executed in September 1961. Elections were held in October 1961. The Justice and Republican People’s Parties formed a shaky coalition. In 1965 the JP, led by Süleyman Demirel, won a major victory in elections. Under Demirel, Turkey saw significant economic growth. The JP espoused Islamist and traditional beliefs that ran directly counter to communist and leftist thought. The left grew increasingly popular among the student population and industrial proletariat. The right also emerged as a strong force in the 1960s, setting the stage for the crisis of the 1970s. The formation of two strong, Islamic-leaning parties,
the National Action Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi) and the National Order Party (Millî Nizam Partisi), seriously threatened the JP’s hold on the government in 1969. Demirel’s JP government started to fall apart in 1971. On March 12, 1971, the army forced the Demirel government from office. Free elections were held in 1973, with a victory by Bülent Ecevit’s RPP. However, because they failed to capture the majority vote, they were forced into coalition governments. This continued throughout the 1970s as rightist and leftist violence escalated. Kurdish separatism also flared up in the 1970s. Kurdish nationalist Abdullah Öcalan formed the left-leaning Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in 1978. The sectarian violence escalated, and the military stepped in. After the Iranian revolution in 1979, Islamic groups in Turkey were suspected of receiving aid from Iran. The religious demonstrations in Konya in September 1980 provided an excuse for direct military intervention. the purge The military suspended all political parties and groups and instituted martial law and curfews. General Kenan Evren was declared acting head of state. The National Security Council (NSC) arrested 122,000 people during 1980–81 in order to stop the violence. Academics and politicians were purged from the system. A new constitution was enacted in 1982. Kenan Evren was then elected president, and the military began to restructure the political system. Elections were held in 1983, with the Motherland Party (Anavatan Partisi) gaining the majority under Turgut Özal. The old parties then reincarnated and changed their names in order to enter the 1984 elections. After Kenan Evren’s term ended in 1989, Turgut Özal became president. Turgut Özal’s presidency, although fraught with corruption and scandal, was also marked by impressive modernization. The 1990s were also marked by the rise of the PKK. After the 1980 coup the Kurdish language was forbidden, as was the term Kurdish as a separate identity. Abdullah Öcalan had fled to Damascus after the 1980 coup. Turkey until 1991 refused to acknowledge the presence of Kurds in the country and referred to them as “mountain Turks.” The government forbade their language, songs, customs, and names. Öcalan’s followers carried out their missions with an almost religious zeal. Talabani of the Kurdish PUK faction based in Iran helped Öcalan get financial support from Kurds living throughout the Middle East, which
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The Hagia Sophia mosque in Istanbul, Turkey. Though a secular state, Turkey is a Muslim nation (mostly Sunni, but significant Shi’i, Alevi, and Sufi communities are present), where only 0.2 percent of the population are Christian or Jewish.
brought the PKK beyond the sphere of Turkey. The PKK also received support from Kurds living in Europe. The PKK used guerrilla warfare to launch attacks within Turkey. The Turkish army responded brutally to the terrorist attacks. Villages thought to be harboring PKK terrorists were destroyed, and thousands were arrested, detained, and tortured. Many innocent people were killed and their homes destroyed. After the U.S. defeat of Iraq in 1991, Turkey feared the creation of a Kurdish state in northern Iraq that would be used as a base for Kurdish attacks on Turkey. Subsequently, President Özal officially recognized the existence of Kurds in Turkey and implemented a bill that would allow the Kurdish language to be used in everyday conversations but not in business, government, or any other official agency. Despite this, the PKK stepped
up their campaigns against the Turkish government, committing more atrocities, which further enraged the Turkish public. Öcalan was captured in Nairobi, Kenya, by Turkish commandos in 1999. He was sentenced to death and imprisoned on an island in the Marmara Sea, where he remained for years. In 1993 the True Path Party came into power, and Tansu çiller became the first female prime minister of Turkey. Necmettin Erbakan was the leader of Refah, which was supported by the young, professional middle class and students. Erbakan did not engage in a radical Islamic changeover. He personally championed reforms to change the working hours during Ramadan and loosen control of the Directorate of Religious Affairs to make it harder for the government to monitor Islam. Erbakan also proposed lifting the
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ban against wearing headscarves in universities and government institutions. The Erbakan/Çiller coalition also made significant overtures to Libya and Iran, and at the same time condemned Israel. With the advent of new freedoms under Erbakan, many other Islamic leaders eagerly expressed their long-silent opinions. Refah wanted to abolish the Swiss legal code instituted by Atatürk, and secularists feared a return to sharia, or Islamic law. Erbakan and Çiller both left government, and in 1998 the Constitutional Court formally disbanded Refah and forced its members out of Parliament. Bülent Ecevit emerged as the new president, in large part because of his handling of Öcalan and the. Kurdish conflict. In 1999 a huge earthquake struck Izmit, near Istanbul, killing between 15,000 and 40,000 people. The government was extremely slow to respond, and the public was enraged by the lack of support from both the government and the military. Memories of the earthquake played a role the emer-
gence of the Justice and Development Party (JDP, or Ak Partisi). In the 2002 elections the JDP, led by Recep Tayyip Erdo˘gan, won a majority in the Grand National Assembly. Although the JDP espoused a moderate Islamic line, it was careful to respect the secular state. Erdo˘gan also instituted reforms to help pull Turkey out of its financial troubles. Erdo˘gan and the JDP also scored a major victory with the October 2005 decision by the European Union (EU) to start Turkey’s EU membership bid. See also gulf war, first (1991). Further reading: Ahmad, Feroz. Turkey: The Quest for Identity. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2003; Kinzer, Stephen. Crescent and Star: Turkey, between Two Worlds. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001; Zurcher, Erik J. Turkey: A Modern History. London: I.B. Tauris, 2001. Katie Belliel
U Uganda (1950–present) The area known today as Uganda was part of the charter of the British East Africa Company in 1888, and was ruled as a protectorate in 1894. As more territory was added to the British claims, the boundaries of what now form Uganda took shape in 1914. It was ruled as a British protectorate until given autonomy in 1962. Apollo Milton Obote was prime minster of Uganda from 1962 to 1966 and state president from 1966 to 1971 and again from 1980 to 1985. Although he began his adult life as a schoolteacher, he is best known for leading Uganda to independence on October 9, 1962, in a relatively peaceful revolution. Prior to independence, Obote served on the Ugandan legislative council beginning in 1957, and in 1960 he founded the Ugandan People’s Congress. Obote created a political coalition with his rival, Sir Edward Mutesa, king of Buganda, in preparation for the peaceful handover of colonial power to indigenous black African rule. Obote used the position of his rival political leader to gain political favor in the region of Buganda. In a practical political move, Mutesa was installed as president with Obote as prime minister. As prime minister, Obote held formal state power in his hands. His nominally socialist rule after independence made him unpopular with Western states, particularly Britain. While the country was peaceful and economically stable, the period immediately following independence in Uganda was a difficult time for both Mutesa’s presidency and Obote’s prime ministership. At
the time of independence, Uganda was the only peaceful nation in the region and it become a safe haven for refugees from Zaïre, Sudan, and Rwanda. This placed a huge drain on Uganda’s scarce resources and economy. This period also made it clear that Obote was not going to share power with coalition president Mutesa. This made confrontation inevitable. The trigger for confrontation was Obote’s indictment in a gold-smuggling plot with Idi Amin, then deputy of the Ugandan Armed Forces. Instead of complying with President Mutesa’s investigations, Obote suspended the Ugandan constitution under the power of his prime ministership, abolishing the role of the leaders of Uganda’s five tribal kingdoms, removing power from Mutesa, and giving himself unlimited emergency powers. The corrupt Ugandan judiciary cleared Obote of all charges of gold smuggling. The incident, however, incited Obote and his supporters to stage a coup against Mutesa in 1966. He then had himself installed as president on March 2. Obote’s first act as president was to have his attorney general, Godfrey Binaisa, rewrite the Ugandan constitution, transfer all powers to Obote’s presidency, and nationalize all foreign assets. Obote’s first presidency did not last long. In 1971 Obote was disposed by his army chief, Idi Amin, who had assisted him in overthrowing Mutesa fewer than 10 years prior. Obote fled to Tanzania with many of his supporters. After nine years in exile, Obote gathered Ugandan exiles in Tanzania and ousted Amin in 1979. In an attempt finally to gain Western support for his second presidency, Obote ordered that Uganda be ruled 433
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by a presidential commission before democratic elections were to be held in 1980. Although Obote won the 1980 elections, his second rule was marked by civil war, further distancing him from Western approval. Believing the 1980 elections to be rigged, the opposition parties staged a guerrilla rebellion under Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Army. Obote was deposed in July 1985, again by his own army commander, Bazilio Okello, and General Tito Okello in a military coup. This time Obote fled to Zambia. Obote remained in southern Africa until his death on October 10, 2005, of kidney failure at a hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa. Idi Amin is perhaps best known for ousting his predecessor, Apollo Milton Obote, and for instituting a totalitarian regime that would devastate Uganda both politically and economically. Amin’s rise to power began in January 1971, when President Obote headed off to the Commonwealth Heads of Government meetings in Singapore. Suspecting trouble, Obote left his staff with the order to have Amin and his supporters arrested upon his departure. On the morning of January 25, 1971, forces loyal to Amin stormed strategic military targets in Kampala and the airport in Entebbe. The first shells fired at Entebbe Airport killed two Roman Catholic priests, setting off a wave of violence throughout the country. Despite the initial disorganization on the part of Amin and his troops, they managed to carry out mass executions of pro-Obote troops and supporters. Obote chose exile in Tanzania. military dictatorship After assuming power, Amin repudiated Obote’s soft socialist foreign policy, resulting in Uganda’s recognition by Israel, Britain, and the United States. However, many African nations and organizations, including the Organization of African Unity, refused to recognize Amin and his military government. Nevertheless, Amin embraced the label “totalitarian” and renamed the government house the Command House, later instituting an advisory defense council composed of military commanders. In an attempt to place Uganda under his military dictatorship, he extended military rule to his cabinet members, who, if not drawn from the military, were advised that they would be subjected to military discipline. Army commanders, with Amin’s blessing, acted like warlords, representing the coercive arm of the government. Foreign policy was revised again in 1972 so that the country could obtain financial assistance and technical support from Libya. In doing so, Amin expelled
all remaining Israeli advisers and became anti-Israeli in accordance with Libyan policy. Amin went in search of foreign help in the form of monetary aid from Saudi Arabia. In doing so, Amin rediscovered Uganda’s previously neglected Islamic heritage. In attempts to recoup profits from lost Western foreign aide, Amin went on to expel the Asian minority in Uganda and seize their property. However, this appropriation proved disastrous for the already failing Ugandan economy, which was fueled by export crops. Yet the money from the sale of export crops was being recycled back into the purchase of imports for the army. As a result, rural farmers turned to smuggling from neighboring countries. This became an obsession for Amin toward the end of his rule. He went on to appoint his mercenary adviser, British citizen Bob Astles, to take all necessary steps to end the problem. The end of Amin’s rule also faced another problem—a counterattack from former Ugandan leader Obote. Amin feared this with good reason. Shortly after Amin expelled the Asian minority in 1972, Obote did attempt an attack into southern parts of Uganda. Although the attack was launched by a small contingent of only 27 army trucks, his ambition was to capture the strategic military post of Masaka near the border. Obote’s troops decided to settle in and wait for a general uprising against Amin, which did not occur. Obote also attempted a seizure of Entebbe Airport by allegedly hijacking an East African Airways flight out of Tanzania. The attempt failed to accomplish much when the pilot blew out the tires on the passenger plane, and the flight remained in Tanzania. Amin is internationally known for the hostage crisis at Entebbe Airport in June 1976, when Amin offered Palestinian hijackers of an Air France jet from Tel Aviv a protected base from which they could press their demands in exchange for the release of Israeli hostages. The dramatic rescue of the hostages by Israeli commandos was a severe blow to Amin. Amin’s rule is also marked by a number of disappearances of priests and ministers in the 1970s. The matter reached a climax with the formal protest against army terrorism and death squad activity in 1977 by Church of Uganda ministers, led by Archbishop Janani Luwum. In response to Luwum’s outspoken agenda against Amin’s violent domestic policies, it appears that Amin had Luwum assassinated. Although Luwum’s body was recovered from a clumsily contrived “auto accident,” subsequent investigations revealed that Luwum had been shot by Amin himself. This last in a long line of atrocities was greeted with international condemnation, but apart from the
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continued trade boycott initiated by the United States in July 1978, verbal condemnation was not accompanied by action. Amin went on to claim that Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere—his perennial enemy, partially due to Nyerere’s acceptance of Obote after the coup—had been at the root of his troubles. Amin accused Nyerere of waging war against Uganda. Amin invaded Tanzanian territory and formally annexed a section across the Kagera River boundary on November 1, 1978. Declaring a formal state of war against Uganda, Nyerere mobilized his citizen army reserves and counterattacked, joined by Ugandan exiles united as the Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA). The Ugandan Army retreated steadily. Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi sent 3,000 troops to aid fellow Muslim Amin, but the Libyans soon found themselves on the front line. Tanzanian troops and the UNLA took Kampala in April 1979, aided by Obote, and Amin fled by air, first to Libya and later into permanent exile in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, where he died on August 16, 2003, after being in a coma for over a month. The current president of Uganda is Yoweri Museveni, who was elected in February 2006. Further reading: Avirgan, Tony. War in Uganda: The Legacy of Idi Amin. Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill, 1982; Hooper, Ed. Uganda. London: Minority Rights Group, 1989; Ingham, Kenneth. Obote: A Political Biography. London: Routledge, 1994; Mamdani, Mahmood. Imperialism and Fascism in Uganda. Nairobi: Heinemann, 1983. Rian Wall
Ukraine Since 1991, Ukraine has been an independent state, the sovereignty of which is now recognized by all the countries of the world. Ukraine is one of the biggest European states (603,700 square kilometers). Ukraine has common borders with seven countries (Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Moldova, Russia, and Byelorussia), and the Black and Azov Seas are on its southern border. Ukraine consists of 24 regions (oblast) and the Crimea Autonomous Republic. The capital of Ukraine is Kiev. A Pan-Ukrainian population census in 2001 found the total number of inhabitants at 48,416,000. The majority are city inhabitants, and 32 percent live in the countryside. Over 100 ethnicities and nationalities are represented in contemporary Ukraine. Among them
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are Ukrainians, Russians, Belorussians, Moldavians, Crimean Tatars, and Bulgarians. Most of the population of Ukraine belongs to the Orthodox Christian Church. Striving for national and state independence was a key issue in Ukraine in the 20th century. This aspiration, partly realized during the hard days of 1917–20, remained potent political motivation for Ukrainians living all over the world. The democracy brought by Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika inspired ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union to activate national liberation movements. Revision of the Ukrainian nation historical past, promoted by representatives of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group of human rights activists; a rise in national identity supported and developed by artists, poets, writers, and scientists; and the people’s movement known as “meeting democracy” had created the necessary background for historical action. On July 16, 1990, the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament) of Ukraine, first among the republics of the former Soviet Union, adopted a declaration of state sovereignty of Ukraine. The next step was a coup that took place in the Soviet Union on August 19–21, 1994, and that resulted in the pronouncement of the Act of State Independence of Ukraine by Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. Soon afterward the first elections were held for president of independent Ukraine (Leonid Kravchuk won and was president from 1991 to 1994), combined with an allUkrainian referendum for endorsement of the independence of Ukraine. Since that time a series of measures aimed at the organization of bodies and institutions necessary for an independent Ukraine have been undertaken. Some acts were compromises with the Russian Federation; because of the deep economic integration of both countries, it was hard to become separated at once. Issues included the state border between Ukraine and Russia in the Azov Sea; the presence of the Russian navy in Sevastopol in Crimea and the status of that city; and the problem of the frontier with Romania around Zmeinyi Island. Some others still remain only partially solved. On December 7–8, 1991, the presidents of Russia, Ukraine, and Belorussia signed a document denouncing the union treaty of 1922, according to which the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had been organized. A treaty establishing a Commonwealth of Independent States was signed instead. Since that time, Ukraine has been free to conduct its internal policy. During 1991–94 a series of democratic reforms were instituted in Ukraine, among which the most important were beginning a constitutional process, the improvement of the multiparty system, the formulation of basic
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principles of foreign policy and international cooperation, the formulation of a military doctrine, introduction of economic reforms, the elaboration of an ethnic policy, and the creation of relationships with the different churches represented in Ukraine. The presidential and parliamentary elections of 1994 opened a new phase in the political development of Ukraine. The keystone of the political history of Ukraine at that time was the adoption of a new constitution (June 28, 1996), a long and hard process that repeatedly caused political and parliamentary criss. It was the beginning of parliamentary and presidential opposition, which led to growing tension during Kuchma’s presidency in relation to the composition of parliament factions and their representation. The presidential elections of 2004 and the following Orange Revolution opened a new era in the political history of Ukraine, characterized by general democratization and liberalization of the political process. Ukrainians dissatisfied with officially announced results of the runoff election between presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovich and leader of the opposition Viktor Yuschenko demonstrated in the principal square of Kiev—the Maidan (Square) of Independence—and for several weeks people from various cities, towns, and villages in Ukraine marched for democracy, for their political rights, and for the possibility to make their political choices freely. orange revolution Representatives of different political parties and movements united their efforts in this process, and the Orange Revolution ended in a victory for democracy in Ukraine. A coalition government, with the participation of all “orange” parties and movements, was formed, with Julia Timoshenko as the first woman prime minister in the history of Ukraine. In local administrations, thousands of former functionaries of different levels have been replaced by “orange” democrats. New priorities in foreign policy, a tendency toward integration with the European Union (EU) and cooperation with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and reorientation of trade relationships have been elaborated. Nevertheless, as early as the beginning of September 2005, Julia Timoshenko’s government was dismissed, and it became clear that there were serious discrepancies among Orange Revolution leaders and representatives of different orange parties. Political reform that implies the transition of Ukraine from presidential to parliamentary republic was adopted
by the parliament and became a point of serious discussion among “orange” revolutionaries, social democrats, representatives of the Party of Regions, and communists. The ideals of democracy and freedom still remain the essence of the Viktor Yuschenko presidency, as was shown by the first free parliamentary election in March 2006. Shortly after its independence, Ukraine faced problems during the transitional period of economic development from planned socialism to free-market forms. The destruction of traditional Soviet resources, marketing, and energetic and macroeconomic networks, along with the extreme difficulty of creating new ones in the European community, and the urgent need for modernization of basic equipment and production techniques, negatively influenced the general state and the prospects of further development of the economy of Ukraine. A so-called shadow economy sprang up and grew rapidly with substantial support from the highest administration of Ukraine, which appeared to be corrupt. Inflation, accompanied by a decrease in purchasing power, indicated that the standard of living of Ukrainians decreased to a crucial level, creating a need for the state administration to finance a series of social programs. Pension reform, changes in support for families with low income, support for veterans of World War II, and many other social actions were undertaken. Broad-scale raising of salaries, stipends, and pensions began in 2004 under the government headed by Viktor Yanukovich on the eve of presidential elections. The new president of Ukraine, Viktor Yuschenko, and his ministries consequently instituted a series of social programs aimed at improving the standard of living. A series of economic reforms, including the introduction of new currency, privatization in agriculture and industry, promotion of national producers and national product exportation, searches for new investments and new sources of power supply abroad, and cooperation with the World Bank, gradually contributed to a general slow growth of the Ukrainian economy after 2000. The creation of a new macroeconomic network, tending toward integration with the European Union (EU) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), is the principal strategic goal proclaimed by President Yuschenko. The organization of an independent state of Ukraine led to a new trend in the development of the ideology and culture of the country, connected with the formation of the ideas of national unity and ethnic and national self-identification. The process of national memory revival, studies of the cultural and historical past of the Ukrainian nation, rediscovering cultural heritage, the revival of the folk culture of national minorities,
United Arab Republic (UAR)
and the establishment of fruitful connections with the Ukrainian diaspora are key aspects of the cultural development of Ukraine in the new millenium. One of the sharpest debates in the context of cultural development is the discussion of an official language of Ukraine. It was demonstrated in the presidential election of 2004 and the parliamentary election of 2006 that a strong Russian-speaking opposition still exists in Ukraine. The activation of religious life in independent Ukraine after the dismantling of a totalitarian ideology brought a series of conflicts, first of all among representatives of different branches of Orthodox Christianity. As stated by the constitution of Ukraine, the nonobligatory character of any religion creates the background necessary for religious pluralism and freedom of people’s consciousness. See also Soviet Union, dissolution of the. Further reading: Dyczok, M. Ukraine: Movement Without Change, Change Without Movement. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 2000; Hal’chyns’kyi, A. Pomarancheva revoliutsiia i nova vlada [Orange revolution and new power]. Kyïv: Lybid, 2005; Kuzio, T., ed. Contemporary Ukraine: Dynamics of Post-Soviet Transformation. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1998; Pogrebinskii, M. Oranzhevaia” revoliutsiia: versii, khronika, dokumenty [Orange revolution: versions, chronicles, documents]. Kiev: Optima, 2005; Szporluk, R. Russia, Ukraine, and the Breakup of the Soviet Union. Stanford, Ca: Hoover Institution Press, 2000. Olena V. Smyntyna
United Arab Emirates (UAE) The United Arab Emirates (UAE), an oil-rich Arab country, is located on the southeast side of the Arabian Peninsula. This country, bordering Oman and Saudi Arabia, comprises seven emirates: Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Al Fujayrah, Ras al-Khaymah, Shariqah, and Um Al Qaywayn. Formerly known as the Trucial States, a term dating from the 19th-century agreement between British and Arab leaders, the UAE was created when six of the emirates merged in 1971; Ras al-Khaymah joined in 1972. Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan served as president from the country’s founding until his death in 2004. His son, Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, succeeded as president. The Supreme Council comprises the individual rulers of the seven emirates, and the president and vice president are elected by the council
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every five years. The position of the presidency is an unofficial hereditary post for the Al Nahyan family. The council also elects the Council of Ministers and an appointed Federal National Council reviews legislation. The federal court system includes all the emirates except Dubai and Ras Al-Khaymah. All of the emirates have a mix of secular law and sharia (Islamic law) with civil, criminal, and high courts. The UAE is a member of the United Nations and the Arab League, and has diplomatic relationships with more than 60 countries. It plays a moderate role in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The UAE plays a vital role in the affairs of the region because of its massive foreign development and moderate foreign policy positions. Unlike its neighbors, the UAE, under the leadership of Sheikh Zayed, promotes religious tolerance. Sheikh Zayed also encouraged foreign development and investment. The UAE is one of the largest producers of oil, after Saudi Arabia and Iran, in the Middle East. Since its formation, the UAE has transformed from an impoverished desert country to a modern, wealthy country. Zayed invested the country’s oil revenues in hospitals, schools, and universities and gave all citizens free and universal access to these public services. He distributed free land and held majlis (traditional Arab consultation councils) that were open to the public. Zayed was a contemporary liberal who advocated for women’s rights and for the education and participation of women in the work force. Education was one of the most significant achievements in the rapid transformation of the UAE. The country boasts numerous universities and colleges and hundreds of schools. Further reading: Anthony, John Duke. Arab States of the Lower Gulf: People, Politics, Petroleum. Washington, DC: Middle East Institute, 1975; Peck, Malcolm C. The United Arab Emirates: A Venture in Unity. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1986; Vine, Peter, and Paula Casey. United Arab Emirates: Profile of a Country’s Heritage and Modern Development. London: Immel, 1992. Julie Eadeh
United Arab Republic (UAR) The United Arab Republic, a union of Egypt and Syria, lasted from 1958 to 1961. As Syrian political parties on
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the left and right vied for power, Syria became enmeshed in a cycle of political instability and short-lived coalition governments. The Ba’ath party, under pressure from the Syrian Communist Party, was instrumental in approaching Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt to propose a union between the two Arab nations early in 1968. Recognizing the difficulties posed by the lack of a contiguous border, with Israel between them, and the political and economic differences between the two countries, Nasser was reluctant to join such a union. The Ba’athists, who mistakenly thought they would control the direction of the union from behind the scenes, convinced Nasser to become the leader of the union. A February 1958 plebiscite on the union received nearly unanimous support from the citizens of both Egypt and Syria, and the union was implemented in late February. The Yemeni imam, or ruler, also joined the union, but Yemen was never fully integrated into the UAR. Nasser served as president, and the Syrian leader Shukri al-Quwatli became vice president, but the real power rested with Egypt, which was by far the larger, more populous, and more powerful of the two nations. Shortly after the establishment of the UAR, Nasser made a tumultuous tour of Syria, where he received overwhelming popular support. It was the apogee of panArabism, but the honeymoon was short-lived. Under the terms of the union all Syrian political parties were dissolved, although the Ba’ath Party had anticipated that it would play a key role. In addition, Egyptian political and economic policies, including land reform, were instituted. Although health services and conditions for the working and urban middle classes improved the Syrian upper class, many Ba’athists and the military grew increasingly disenchanted with Nasser. Initially Nasser’s close associate General Abd al-Hakim Amer was appointed to oversee the government in Syria, but by 1960 the former Syrian interior minister, Abd al-Hamid Sarraj, became the strongman within the administration. Syrians chafed under his heavy-handed rule. The UAR also faced considerable opposition from conservative Arab regimes and Western nations, especially the United States. To counter Nasser’s growing strength, the Hashemite monarchs in Jordan and Iraq announced a union between their two nations, but it was never really implemented. Saudi Arabia was also opposed to the union and feared the political shift toward the left. The United States viewed the union through the prism of the cold war and was determined to prevent possible Soviet expansion into the region. The civil war in Lebanon and the revolution in Iraq, both in 1958, accentuated the rivalries between the progressive, leftist
Arab regimes dominated by Nasser and the conservative monarchies in what has been called the Arab cold war. The West blamed Nasser for both the Lebanese civil war and the Iraqi revolution. Although Nasser supported both, he was not primarily responsible for either. The nationalization of banks and many large businesses in the summer of 1961 created a form of state socialism that was unpopular in Syria. In reaction, army officers led a coup in September 1961 to withdraw from the union, and Nasser reluctantly agreed to the breakup. Nasser blamed Syrian feudal elites and conservative Arab regimes, particularly Saudi Arabia, for the collapse of the union. For the remainder of the 1960s he turned increasingly to the left and to support from the Soviet Union. In Syria the breakup of the UAR allowed the Ba’ath Party gradually to become the dominant political force. Following the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Hafez al-Assad, a committed Ba’athist, seized power and established a regime that remained in power into the 21st century. Although both Nasser and the Ba’ath Party continued to advocate Arab union, no effective political or economic unions among Arab nations were formed after the collapse of the UAR. See also Iranian revolution; Iraq revolution (1958). Further reading: Herzog, Chaim. The Arab-Israeli Wars: War and Peace in the Middle East. New York: Vintage, 1984; Jankowski, James. Nasser’s Egypt, Arab Nationalism, and the United Arab Republic. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002. Janice J. Terry
United Nations The United Nations, already six decades old, has traversed a long, strife-formed cold war. Not a superstate above the states, it collectively approaches issues of war, peace, development, and justice, and has sufficient transforming potentials to create a new, better world order. Since the end of the cold war, it has acquired new dynamism, but at the same time it has to be restructured to cope with an emerging complex world of nation-states, various movements, and unforeseen challenges like terrorism. The United Nations, founded in the aftermath of World War II, was established at the San Francisco Conference in 1945 on the principle of collective security. It was the successor to the League of Nations, which had
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Indonesian peacekeepers board an aircraft in Jakarta, Indonesia, en route to Lebanon to support the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). The peacekeeping force monitored the cease-fire between Hizbollah and Israel.
been established after World War I but failed to organize world order on the principles of universality. The United Nations, therefore, took care to avoid the mistakes of its predecessor, and five major powers were given special power and responsibility through the mechanism of “veto” power in the most important organ of the United Nations—the Security Council. The goals of the United Nations were enshrined in the Charter: to maintain international peace and security, to develop friendly relations among nations, to achieve international cooperation, and to work as a harmonizer among nations. Security was the principal goal of the United Nations. Unlike in the league, however, security was not narrowly conceived in the United Nations but was broadened to include socioeconomic justice, human rights, and development. Like the league, the United Nations was based on the principles of collective security. The new principle on
which the league and the United Nations were based does not consider security as the individual affair of states or regions but as a collective affair of all states, and aggression against one state is considered aggression against all others. All states are obliged to take collective action against the aggressor. from the league The UN Charter provided for six major organs, four of which evolved out of the League of Nations. The General Assembly was based on the democratic principle of “one country, one vote,” irrespective of size and power, and was essentially a deliberative organ. The countries of the Third World used the body for organizing themselves and took up issues of colonialism and racialism. The Charter provided for some supervisory functions of the General Assembly. The council and assembly had joint functions as well. The Security Council, the most
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important organ of the United Nations, reflected the reality of power. The United States, the Soviet Union, France, Great Britain, and China were the five permanent members with veto power and had special responsibility to maintain world peace and security. However, veto became a mechanism of obstruction, and the Soviet Union frequently used it; while the United States did not use it in earlier years, the frequency of veto increased after 1970. The Security Council was based on the assumption that the major powers would agree on issues of war and peace, but the onset of the cold war around 1945 made the United Nations a helpless spectator. The Charter provided for a mechanism of maintaining peace, whereby the council may call upon members states to apply sanctions against the aggressor and may form a Military Staff Committee consisting of the chief of staff of permanent members of the Security Council. The enforcement of peace was possible in the Korean War, and a united command was formed under the United States. It placed an embargo on the export of strategic materials to China and North Korea. Subsequently the provision could not be replicated for a long time. It was only after the closing stages of the cold war that the Security Council became effective again; consultations and coordination among the major powers in the council have been frequent, as in the Persian Gulf crisis and more recently over Iran’s nuclear ambitions. For about five decades of the cold war, the United Nations never appeared to play the role envisaged at San Francisco in the realm of peace and security; it was bypassed in major flash points across the globe, such as the Panama Canal crisis, Hungary, the berlin blockade, the Cuban missile crisis, Arab-Israeli conflicts, the India-China border war, Vietnam and indochina, and the Sino-Soviet border war. The United Nations was a passive bystander as major powers professed to settle scores outside the United Nations. When the United Nations was hamstrung due to the use of veto, the General Assembly sought a way out through the Uniting for Peace Resolution to consider measures in a situation of breach of peace. After the end of the cold war, the United Nations became more active again, although in the process it acquired new functions, in line with but not envisaged in the Charter. During the turn of the 21st century this function, known as peacekeeping—traditionally denoting acting as a buffer between contending parties or monitoring ceasefire agreements—expanded to other areas. Now peacekeeping also means the provision of humanitarian relief, removal of mines, repatriation of refugees, and reconstruction of national infrastructure in devasted
areas, such as Afghanistan. The costs of all of these functions have been enormous, especially in recent peacekeeping operations: South Africa, Rwanda, Iraq-Kuwait, Mozambique, Somalia, Haiti, and Liberia. Sometimes the United Nations has drawn flak; the UN troops have also been targeted, as in Somalia and Bosnia. cooperation Unlike during the cold war years, however, the United Nations finds cooperation among major powers to repulse aggression. In the First Gulf War, Moscow supported U.S. efforts to impose sanctions against Iraq, which had annexed Kuwait. The machinery of the United Nations was used. Other major powers contributed troops, particularly France and Britain. Japan and Germany too accepted new security roles. Besides war and peace, the United Nations has been instrumental in various humanitarian efforts. A large amount of credit must go to the United Nations for ending apartheid in South Africa, improving life expectancy in Africa, helping children suffering from malnutrition, and fighting diseases. It has not been as successful in the removal of global poverty, but it has launched efforts in that direction. Now the United Nations finds itself playing a new role against international terrorism. It has not been as successful, and the United States acted unilaterally in 1998 when al-Qaeda attacked U.S. embassies in East Africa. Subsequently, following September 11, 2001, the United States took drastic steps, and the United Nations was more involved than before; terrorism became a key issue of international and United Nations concern. The United Nations has been moving into new, uncharted areas. In a world where millions of children die days after they are born, the issue of human rights has become a major arena of international attention. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948, has been enshrined in constitutions of states. Now the United Nations has also been a force in expanding the frontiers of democracy worldwide, believing that democracy fosters world peace. While the United Nations is engaged in redefining issues of war, peace, development, and freedom, reforming the world body has become a burning issue since the end of the cold war, and more particularly since 1998, when 185 states met to celebrate 50 years of the United Nations. There is also demand to restructure the Security Council and to add new permanent members—with or without veto power. Brazil, Germany, India, Japan, and some African countries are key candidates demanding permanent places on the Security Council.
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The major powers with vetos—the United States, Russia, China, Britain, and France—themselves differ about who should be permanent members in a reformed council. Reforms are, however, necessary to make the United Nations more in tune with the changes of the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. See also AIDS crisis. Further reading: Alleyne, Mark D. “The United Nations Celebrity Diplomacy.” SAIS Review 25, no. 1 (2005); Annan, Kofi. “‘In Larger Freedom’: Decision Time at the UN.” Foreign Affairs 84, no. 3 (2005); Hoffman, Stanley. “Thoughts on the UN at Fifty.” European Journal of International Law (6, no. 3, 1995); Johannes, Morsink. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins, Drafting and Intent. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999; Russel, T. Bruce. “Ten Balances for Weighing UN Reform Proposals.” Political Science Quarterly 111, no. 2 (1996). R.G. Pradhan
U Nu
(1907–1995) Burmese leader U Nu was the prime minister of Burma (now the Union of Myanmar) from 1948 to 1958 and from 1960 to 1962 and was an important leader earlier in the struggle for independence from Britain. U Nu was born in a period during which the British colonization of Burma was coming under increasing pressure from nationalist Burmese and opposition in Britain. U Nu graduated from the University of Rangoon and worked for several years as a schoolteacher. In 1934 he returned to the university to study law and became involved with nationalist politics. He became leader of the student union and was subsequently expelled from the university, along with Aung San. The subsequent student strike was one of the earliest confrontations between the Burmese and the British, which intensified in the following years. U Nu joined the WeBurmans Association (Dobama Asi-ayone), which had been formed in the wake of the 1932 anti-Indian riots and was a center for nationalism. The association was dominated at first by the Rangoon University student union, but under U Nu and others it expanded its activities. It was influenced by a combination of Marxism, democratic socialism, and Irish nationalism. The leaders, including U Nu, took the forename Thakin, or master, to demonstrate that they were not subservient to the British. The forename “U” is an honorific.
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When World War II broke out in Asia, British authorities arrested U Nu and others, and they were imprisoned until Burma was invaded and occupied by the Japanese. The Japanese established a puppet government under Ba Maw, and U Nu served in his cabinet for a period. In the years between the end of the war and independence, U Nu assumed the leading position in the nationalist movement following Aung San’s assassination in 1947. Consequently, he headed the AntiFascist People’s Freedom League and became the first prime minister of independent Burma in 1948. Winning two subsequent elections, he remained in office for a decade, with only a brief hiatus in 1956–57. His time as prime minister was marked by numerous communist insurgencies and independence struggles by ethnic minority peoples, and a decline in the value of rice exports. His government proved unable to improve the lot of the people. He resigned in 1958, and the government was taken over by General Ne Win as a result of widespread social disorder. U Nu returned to power in a brief return to democracy from 1960 to 1962, but the subsequent military coup returned the country to the repressive regime that remained in power into the 21st century. U Nu was imprisoned by Ne Win and not released until 1969. He made several subsequent attempts to return to power, the first when he attempted to organize resistance to the military government in 1969. He was then forced into exile in India, although he returned to Rangoon to become a Buddhist monk in 1980. He had throughout his life been a devoted Buddhist and had introduced several laws to support the religion. In 1988 it briefly appeared that democracy would return to Burma, but U Nu’s attempt to seize power was crushed and he was put under house arrest. He was freed in 1992 and died in Rangoon three years later. See also Aung San Suu Kyi. Further reading: Fink, Cristina. Living Silence: Burma under Military Rule. London: Zed Books, 2001; Lintner, Bertil. Burma in Revolt: Opium and Insurgency since 1948. Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkworm Books, 2000; Nu, U. U Nu: Saturday’s Son. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975. John Walsh
U.S.-Japan Mutual Defense Treaty This was an agreement between the United States and Japan, which concluded in 1955, that allowed the United
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States to maintain its major security presence in Japan. Because of the communist threat in the cold war, the government of Yoshida Shigeru of Japan agreed to a U.S. proposal to create the Self-Defense Force (SDF) at a modest size of 180,000 troops in 1954. By allowing the Japanese government to train a modestly sized defense force, the constitution of 1947 was kept intact. The original treaty was replaced in 1960 by the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security, which marked a significant change from the one-sided alliance to a more balanced relationship based on shared responsibility for defense. For the Japanese, the treaty provided a commitment from the United States to defend Japan against an armed attack, and it also required the United States to consult the Japanese government on the use of military bases on its soil. Consultation was required to ensure that any major changes to U.S. operations or force deployments would be approved by both governments. For the Eisenhower administration, the treaty ensured a greater commitment to a stable alliance to support U.S. interests in Northeast Asia. Gradually Japan took a greater share for its defense. In 1962 Japan began to pay some of the cost of U.S. military installations in Japan. The United States returned Okinawa and the Ryukyu Islands to Japanese control. Beginning in the mid-1970s, U.S. forces were gradually reduced in Japan. In the late 1970s a new series of agreements were implemented to transfer the responsibility for protecting specific sea lanes to Japan. Along with its expanded commitments, Japan broke the former 1 percent spending cap for defense and began purchasing Americanmade aircraft. The collapse of the Soviet Union brought renewed focus to the U.S.-Japan defense alliance and lessened the need for a major U.S. military presence in northeast Asia. At the same time, Japan began to take on a greater international role. However, in 1991, the Japanese government was forced to decline requests to send troops to participate in the First Gulf War, bowing to parliamentary opposition. The next year, the Japanese government passed a new law authorizing Japan to participate in United Nations peacekeeping operations, with contingents of Japanese troops. The expansion of Japan’s international commitments were reaffirmed in 1996 with the Clinton-Hashimoto Security Declaration, in which the U.S. committed to maintain 100,000 troops in the Western Pacific region that included Japan. In 1999 the Japanese Diet passed the Law Concerning Measures to Ensure the Peace and Security of Japan in Situations in Areas Surrounding Japan. It authorized the
use of force in “rear areas” surrounding Japan, partly in response to Communist North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons. After 2001 Japan’s Self-Defense Forces and Maritime Defense Forces participated in U.S.-led military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Washington encouraged and supported Japanese efforts to contribute to the war on terror. Further reading: Campbell, Kurt M. “Energizing the U.S.Japan Security Partnership.” Washington Quarterly 23, no. 4 (Autumn 2000); Green, Michael J. Arming Japan: Defense Production, Alliance Politics, and the Postwar Search for Autonomy. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995; Takakazu, Kuriyama. “The Japan-US Alliance in Evolution.” In The Future of America’s Alliances in Northeast Asia, edited by Michael H. Armacost and Daniel I. Okimoto, 35–47. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2004. Dan Fitzsimmons
U.S. relations with China (Nixon) The visit of U.S. president Richard Nixon to China in February 1972 marked a turning point in U.S.-China relations. It gave maneuvering space to the United States in the strategic contest with the USSR. Their confrontation in the korean war began two decades of confrontation at a number of strategic points, especially in the Taiwan Straits and in Vietnam, where the United States was embroiled in a ground war supporting South Vietnam and while China provided backing to its then-ally North Vietnam. The turn in U.S.-China ties from confrontation to rapproachment was a result of a host of factors, but mainly because both nations were concerned about the dangers posed by the Soviet Union. The U.S. Senate began a review of U.S.-China policy. China too was moving from Maoist ideological puritanism toward greater pragmatism, spurred on by the Sino-Soviet border dispute. The Soviet Union’s intervention in Czechoslovakia in August 1968 led to its pronouncement of the Brezhnev Doctrine that as the leading country of the Marxist bloc, the USSR had the right to determine the correct interpretation of Marxism and to intervene in socialist countries that deviated from the correct line. Since China under Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) had developed its own version of Marxism, it feared that it could become a Soviet target for its deviations. Hence came China’s quest to end its diplomatic isolation with a rapprochement with the United States.
U.S.-Republic of Korea Mutual Defense Treaty
The Nixon administration saw an opening with China as a graceful way out of the Vietnam War. It therefore needed China’s leverage to facilitate a U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. The opening came when U.S. and Chinese table tennis teams met in an international table tennis tournament, with the result that the U.S. team was invited to China. President Nixon took steps to expedite visas for visitors from China to the United States, relaxed currency controls, and lifted restrictions on U.S. oil companies to provide fuel to ships and aircraft traveling to and from China. Since Washington and Beijing had no diplomatic ties, Pakistan acted as intermediary. In July 1971 National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger secretly visited China via Pakistan “to seek normalization of relations” and an exchange of views of common interest. The announcement heralded an atmosphere of warmth and cordiality in U.S.-China relations, which had been frozen for two decades. Meanwhile the United States had also departed from its hard-line stand that blocked the People’s Republic of China from seating its legitimate representation in the United Nations. In August 1971 the United States dropped its opposition, paving the way for the seating of China in the United Nations. In his report to the U.S. Congress on February 9, 1971, Nixon stressed the importance of his forthcoming visit to China as the starting point for changing “the post-war landscape.” While a quick resolution of outstanding issues were not possible, it signaled the end of “a sterile and barren interlude” in ties. Nixon arrived in Beijing on February 21, 1972, accompanied by Secretary of State William P. Rogers and Henry Kissinger. The visit generated global interest as a watershed in redefining the balance of power of the world. Transcending previous differences, Nixon emphasized “common interests” in a new era. The two countries signed the Shanghai Communiqué, wherein China stated its stand on Cambodia, Korea, and Vietnam. The United States envisaged “the ultimate withdrawal” of all forces from Indochina; significantly, both countries declared opposition to hegemony in the Asia-Pacific area, implying that both had an interest in limiting Soviet power in the region. The Taiwan issue evaded a solution, but U.S.-China ties had moved from deep hostility to détente, facilitating major changes in the global balance of power.
1971; Fairbank, John King. China Perceived: Images and Policies in Chinese-American Relations. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974; ———. The United States and China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1939; Gittings, John. The World and China, 1922–1972. London: Eyre Methuen, 1974.
Further reading: Barnds, William J. China and America: The Search for a New Relationship. New York: New York University Press, 1977; Clubb, O. Edmand. China and Russia: The Great Game. New York: Columbia University Press,
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U.S.-Republic of Korea Mutual Defense Treaty The U.S.-Republic of Korea (ROK, South Korea) Mutual Defense Treaty was signed October 1, 1953, and became effective in 1954. It committed the United States to the defense of the ROK against future attacks by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, North Korea). In early 1953, as the Korean War armistice talks opened, U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower sought a way to convince ROK president Syngman Rhee to accept a truce with DPRK. Rhee, who had insisted that no truce short of military reunification of the two Koreas would suffice, balked at the U.S. demand that he sign an armistice with DPRK. Rhee flatly rejected any agreement that would allow the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army (Chinese Communists) to remain in Korea following a ceasefire because he maintained that such an agreement would be tantamount to ROK’s signing its own death warrant. Despite Eisenhower’s assurances that the United States would pursue all peaceful means of reunification, and offers to enter a mutual security pact with the ROK, Rhee sought a mutual defense treaty with the United States as a precondition for any armistice. Rhee’s unilateral release of 25,000 DPRK prisoners of war on June 25, 1953, complicated negotiations and increased pressure on the United States to bring the ROK leader to agree to an armistice. To that end, Eisenhower sent Assistant Secretary of State Walter Robinson to offer Rhee a mutual security pact and promised economic incentives in return for Rhee’s agreement. The Robinson mission was successful, and when Rhee did not stand in the way of the armistice, which was signed on July 27, 1953, the two countries set about crafting the bilateral treaty. On August 8, 1953, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles initiated negotiations that culminated in a treaty of six articles, based on the model of existing treaties between the United States and the Philippines, and the United States and Australia and New Zealand. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization model was
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rejected because it would have given the president the authority to consider an external attack on ROK as an attack on American territory. Seeking to limit its commitment and to contain its ally, the United States defined its responsibilities as extending only to territory under ROK control at the time the treaty was signed or subsequently recognized as lawfully incorporated into the ROK. During the ratification debates in the U.S. Senate a note of understanding was added to the treaty clarifying the U.S. position that the mutual defense agreement extended only to attacks from external forces. It received ratification on January 26, 1954, and the president accepted the Senate’s recommendations on February 5, 1954, subject to the agreement on the limitation of commitment. ROK agreed to the change, and the treaty came into effect when ratification documents were exchanged in Washington, D.C., on November 17, 1954. The treaty remains in effect, and U.S. forces remain stationed in the ROK. Further reading: Collins, J. Lawton. War in Peacetime: The History and Lessons of Korea. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1969; Stueck, William, ed. The Korean War in World History. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004; U.S. Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, Vol. XV: Korea. 2 parts. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1984. Anthony Santoro
U.S.-Taiwan Mutual Defense Treaty The United States and the Republic of China (Taiwan) signed a mutual defense treaty in 1954 in which the United States would provide protection for the ROC in case of invasion by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The treaty was approved by U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower and Taiwan’s president Chiang Kai-shek and was fully ratified by their respective legislatures. The treaty was a product of U.S. cold war policy. The United States had washed its hands of China’s civil war in 1948, but had become concerned about communist expansion when Communist North Korea attacked proWestern South Korea in 1950. The United States then sent the Seventh Fleet to patrol the waters in Taiwan Strait. In September 1954 the PRC attacked the ROC. The terms of the treaty committed the U.S. government to deploy land, sea, and air forces in and around Taiwan as required for its defense. The treaty also stipulated that the ROC and the United States would aid each other
to increase their capacity to resist an armed attack or communist subversive activities directed against either country’s territorial integrity. Furthermore, both sides agreed to maintain peace and security in the region and refrain from the use of force in any manner inconsistent with their obligations to the United Nations. Following the 1954 crisis with the PRC, the United States became concerned that the nationalist government of Taiwan might deploy force against the mainland. This could possibly involve American troops despite the treaty’s defensive nature. United States Secretary of State John Foster Dulles met with ROC president Chiang Kaishek to urge against attacking the PRC. An incident occurred in 1958 when the PRC shot down two Nationalist F-84s on patrol. The PRC also renewed attacks on the offshore islands in midsummer 1958, testing the commitment of the United States to the treaty. In response, the United States deployed an aircraft carrier battle group to the region that included combat aircraft and transports. Nationalist forces were escorted safely by their ships to supply their offshore islands. Both the United States and the Soviet Union urged a peaceful solution. Throughout the 1950s–60s the United States remained sympathetic to the cause of the ROC but also acted to restrain the ROC from acts that might provoke the PRC. Beginning in 1971 the United States began to negotiate with the PRC. In 1972 President Richard Nixon visited China. The visit culminated in the Shanghai Communiqué in which China declared that Taiwan was a part of China and that differences should be resolved peacefully. In 1978 President Jimmy Carter established formal diplomatic relations with the PRC, effective in 1979, thereby severing relations with the ROC and ending the U.S.-ROC Mutual Defense Treaty. A Taiwan Relations Act enacted by the U.S. Senate in 1979 authorized nonofficial relations with the ROC that also provided for the U.S. sale of weapons to the ROC. See also U.S. relations with China (Nixon). Further reading: Gordon, Leonard H. D. “United States Opposition to Use of Force in the Taiwan Strait, 1954–1962.” Journal of American History 72, no. 3 (December 1985); Graff, David A., and Robin Higham. A Military History of China. Cambridge, MA: Westview Press, 2002; Snyder, Edwin K. The Taiwan Relations Act and the Defense of the Republic of China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980; Tucker, Nancy Bernkopf. Dangerous Strait: The U.S.-Taiwan-China Crisis. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. Dan Fitzsimmons
V Vajpayee, Atal Bihari
(1924– ) Indian political leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee is the former leader of the bharatiya janata party (BJP), or Indian People’s Party, a proHindu political movement that seeks to define Indian culture and society according to Hindu religious values. Vajpayee was twice prime minister of India, in 1996 and from 1998 to 2004. He is considered the leader of Hindu nationalism and served as a member of parliament for almost 50 years. During his six years as prime minister, Vajpayee worked to modernize the Indian economy and settle long-standing disputes with Pakistan. His government has been accused of fostering racism against Muslims and political extremism. Alongside his political activity Vajpayee also earned a reputation as a poet, publishing collections of poetry. Vajpayee was born in Gwailor in Madhya Pradesh in 1924. He earned a master’s degree in political science from Victoria College and DAV College. His involvement with politics started at a very early age. Although initially close to communism he soon shifted to the right, finding inspiration in the campaigns of Syama Prasad Mookerjee for the inclusion of the Muslim majority state of Kashmir in the Indian Union. In 1957 Vajpayee won his first parliamentary seat, and, after Mookerjee’s death, he took on the leadership of the BJS, becoming one of the major and most respected voices of opposition to the congress party. Yet, although the BJS increasingly won strong support in the northern regions of the country, it repeatedly failed to remove the Congress from power.
During the Indian Emergency of 1975–77, proclaimed by then-prime minister indira gandhi, Vajpayee was a vocal critic of the government and the suspensions of civil rights. He was also briefly put in jail. Upon his release he helped to form the Janata Coalition. In his two years in government and in spite of his Hindu nationalism, Vajpayee worked to improve diplomatic relationships with Pakistan and China, visiting both countries and establishing trade relations with them. As the Janata government folded, destroyed by internal rifts, Vajpayee founded the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which became the new party of Hindu nationalism and conservatism. The party performed badly in the 1984 election, in which it won only two seats in Parliament, in part because of the wave of sympathy for the Congress Party that swept the nation after the murder of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. The anti-Muslim sentiment that took hold of large sectors of the nation in the 1980s and early 1990s led to an impressive growth in the BJP. With strong parliamentary support, Vajpayee embarked on a large program of economic reforms, encouraging the private sector and limiting state involvement in the industrial sector to contain waste and public debt. He also stimulated foreign investments and research in information technology, making India one of the major powers in the field. During Vajpayee’s government, India experienced one of its fastest periods of economic growth. Yet critics argue that the poorer sectors of Indian society were left out of this prosperity. Vajpayee’s foreign policy record is equally mixed. His decision to 445
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conduct five underground nuclear tests in Rajasthan provoked international criticism. Yet his government made historic progress in the establishment of normal relations with Pakistan, and President bill clinton’s official visit to India signaled the beginning of a new diplomatic entente between the United States and India after the tensions of the cold war. The economic and diplomatic successes of his government, however, were not enough to assure Vajpayee’s reelection. See also janata party. Further reading: Thakur, C. P., and Devendra P. Sharma. India Under Atal Bihari Vajpayee: The BJP Era. New Delhi: Ubs Publishing Distributors, 1999; Vajpayee, Atal Bihari. Selected Speeches. New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 2000. Luca Prono
Vatican II Council (1962–1965) The Second Vatican Council was one of the most significant events in the history of the Roman Catholic Church. As an ecumenical council Vatican II attempted to redirect the Catholic Church. Its effect was considerable, both in its intended and unintended results. The council was called by Pope John XXIII in January 1959. He signaled the need for renewal so that the church could more effectively impact the world. The first session of the council was held in fall 1962. Shortly after its conclusion, Paul VI replaced John XXIII as pope. The
council continued for three more sessions, concluding on December 8, 1965. It issued 16 documents, the most authoritative being the Constitutions on the Liturgy, the Church, Revelation, and the Church in the Modern World. The council envisioned serious change. It directed a major revision of the liturgy, the services of the Catholic Church that had practically not changed for four centuries. It promoted the use of the Bible and emphasized its authority, mandated a restoration of the college of bishops in the governing of the church, reversed the earlier rejection of the ecumenical movement among the Christian churches, took a positive approach to other religions and to modern society, and reversed the traditional Catholic position upholding the ideal of the governmental establishment of the church. The council opened the door to change, and a period of rapid, confusing, and often unintended change then began. For instance, shortly after the council, the liturgy began to be celebrated in the vernacular, the Eucharist was celebrated with the priest facing the people, and women stopped wearing head-coverings. For many, there was shock that the unchangeable had changed. For others, when Pope Paul VI refused to change the ruling against artificial contraception in 1967, there was shock that the changes would not include the elimination of many unpopular teachings and practices. Many Catholics took a secularizing approach, many a conservative resisting approach; many clergy and laity left, and soon there was a common conviction the Catholic Church was in crisis. Pope john paul ii, who had participated in the council as archbishop of Kraków, began a process of stabilization after becoming pope in 1978. The Extraordinary Synod of Bishops in 1985 under his leadership reaffirmed the value of Vatican II and urged Catholics to avoid the deviations of extreme rejection and of promotion of secularization. As a result of his papacy, Vatican II has been accepted as the charter of the modern church and may turn out to be the source of renewal that was hoped for. Further reading: Fesquet, Henri. The Drama of Vatican II. New York: Random House, 1967; Flannery, Austin O. P., ed. Vatican Council II, The Conciliar and Post Consiliar Documents. Northport, NY: Costell, 1981; Weigel, George. Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II. New York: Harper Collins Cliff Street Books, 1999.
Vatican City is a landlocked sovereign city-state whose territory consists of a walled enclave within the city of Rome.
Stephen B. Clark
Velasco Ibarra, José
(1893–1979) president of Ecuador The “father of Ecuadorian populism,” José María Velasco Ibarra was the country’s president five times from the 1930s to the 1970s. A gifted orator, charismatic and mercurial, he is perhaps best known for his boast, “Give me a balcony, and I will be president!” Beginning with his campaign for his second term (1944–47), Velasco Ibarra cultivated a large personal following, mainly among coastal urban dwellers, by employing a host of modern campaign techniques that included radio, public address systems, and mass-produced leaflets. In subsequent years, he forged a national state far more activist and populist in orientation. Pitching his appeal principally to the urban working and middle classes, he alienated many of the country’s traditional landowning and military elite while leaving traditional relations of power and privilege largely intact. In keeping with broader 20th-century trends in Latin America, he also promoted the expansion of internal infrastructure and public works (especially roads); implemented universal suffrage; and used nationalist discourse to bolster his own popularity and unify his compatriots vis-à-vis other countries. The populist legacy he bequeathed continues to shape Ecuador’s political landscape. Born in Quito on March 19, 1893, to a middleclass family, he graduated from the capital city’s Central University law school and soon established a reputation as one of the country’s leading writers and intellectuals. In 1932 he was named president of the House of Deputies and in 1933 won the country’s presidential election. Serving only a year before being overthrown by the military, he went into exile in Colombia and Argentina. From exile he built a formidable following, returning in 1944 to wide popular acclaim, mobilizing strikes and protests and forcing the resignation of the sitting president. As provisional president he supervised a constitutional convention and triumphed in the 1944 presidential election that followed. His populist policies alienated many of his elite supporters, prompting his overthrow by the military in 1947. Again going into exile, he returned for the 1952 presidential campaign and won in a landslide. He was reelected in 1960, only to be overthrown by the military a year later; the same sequence unfolded in his election of 1968 and overthrow in 1972. Like most populists of the era he was also a nationalist, and his emphasis on Ecuadorian national sovereignty prompted him to enforce the 1952 Declaration of Santiago among Ecuador, Chile, and Peru, which
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extended these countries’ territorial waters 200 miles into the Pacific to protect their rich fishing grounds. The United States, the Soviet Union, and other countries recognized only a 12-mile limit. The result was the so-called tuna war of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the Velasco Ibarra regime impounded U.S. tuna boats that had not paid the requisite average $10,000 special fee, prompting a cutoff in most U.S. aid. His populist policies, causing a growing economic crisis and fiscally unsustainable, prompted his final overthrow in 1972. He died on March 30, 1979, leaving a complex legacy of heightened political mobilization, resurgent nationalism, and unmet political and economic aspirations on the part of the country’s poor majority. Further reading: de la Torre, Carlos. Populist Seduction in Latin America: The Ecuadorian Experience. Athens, OH: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 2000; Palmerlee, Danny, Carolyn McCarthy, and Michael Grosberg. Lonely Planet Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands. Oakland: Lonely Planet Publications, 2006. Michael J. Schroeder
Vietnam, Democratic Republic of The Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), or North Vietnam, as it became commonly known after the 1954 Geneva Accords, came into existence on September 2, 1945. Following the Japanese surrender in World War II, Vietnamese Communist Party (Vietminh) leader ho chi minh seized the opportunity and declared Vietnamese independence. Vietminh strength was centered in the north. The French, however, were disinclined to accept this, and moved to reimpose their colonial rule over the entire region. They quickly established control in the south, although they could not effectively control the countryside. Since the French and the Vietminh hoped to avoid a full-scale war, both sides entered into intermittent negotiations. In March 1946 the French provisionally recognized the DRV in exchange for Ho’s agreement to include the north in a proposed French Union. Final agreement remained elusive, however, and the relationship between the two sides continued to deteriorate. In November 1946 the French shelled the port of Haiphong. Ho and his supporters escaped into the mountains in the north and began a war of nationwide resistance.
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With fear showing on their faces, women and children scurry past the bodies of three Vietcong killed in the fighting in May 1968.
The war against the French unfolded against the backdrop of the emerging cold war. On the battlefield, the Vietminh relied on the military genius of General vo nguyen giap. They also seized land belonging to French landowners and alleged traitors and redistributed it to peasants, winning popular support. The French were decisively defeated at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in May 1954. At the Geneva Conference that followed, Ho was pressured by the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China to accept a compromise. The result was the partitioning of Vietnam, with the promise of nationwide elections in 1956. Those elections never took place. Although he had envisioned the establishment of an independent government over all of Vietnam, Ho had to accept a truncated Democratic Republic of Vietnam north of the 17th parallel. With the official formation of the DRV, North Vietnam became the first communist state in Southeast Asia, with Ho Chi Minh as president and Hanoi as its capital. Political power rested in the Communist Party, or the Vietnamese Workers’ Party (VWP), as it had been renamed in 1951. The power nucleus of the VWP was the Politburo, which was responsible for day-to-day decision making. The primary task that confronted Ho and his colleagues was the need to consolidate their rule. At Geneva the DRV leadership had issued a directive that indicated its intention to proceed cautiously and take gradual steps toward establishing a socialist economy. In order
to reassure the population, the government announced that the country would operate with a mixed economy, indicating acceptance of private wealth and property. At the same time, the government also stated its intention to respect the freedom of religion. These pronouncements failed to reassure many in the north, and after the partition some 800,000 refugees made the trek south. An official policy of fair treatment for Catholics notwithstanding, many leaders in the VWP and others in local party and government structures continued to nurture suspicion of them, and harsh treatment of Catholics bred resentment in some areas. The economy, which had been devastated by years of war, posed a tremendous challenge to the government. Moreover, fleeing refugees left many businesses abandoned. The DRV government moved to nationalize certain sectors of the economy such as utilities, banking, and some large enterprises. Prices and wages also came under government regulation. The industrial sector had remained underdeveloped under French rule. In 1961 the government launched the first Five-Year Plan to develop heavy industry. By the middle of the decade war with the United States diverted resources from industrial development and stalled these efforts. The agricultural sector required immediate attention since food was in chronically short supply. This, as well as the need to win over the rural population, seemed to demand land reform. In 1955 the government launched a program to confiscate land from wealthy landlords for redistribution. The land reform program, however, produced mixed results. On the positive side it increased the rates of landownership, increased rice production, reduced the influence of wealthy landlords, and won the support of numerous poor peasants who reaped the benefits. On the negative side, overzealous cadres and poor peasants often denounced those who owned only medium-sized holdings, and local tribunals executed many. In 1956 the hostility eventually erupted in a peasant uprising in the province of Nghe An. Ho Chi Minh publicly admitted that errors had been made and slowed the pace of land reform. But within two years the government initiated a large-scale collectivization effort that brought most of the rural population into some form of statecontrolled cooperative farming. The VWP also created party-run organizations that recruited different segments of Vietnamese society, including veterans, workers, farmers, youths, and women. By mobilizing the population into various communist-led organizations, the VWP realized its domination of Vietnamese society.
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The consolidation and nation-building efforts in the north also included increasingly harsh efforts to silence criticism and dissent. Freedom of expression was curbed. Authors of protest literature came under increasing public attack from 1958 onward. Culprits were sent to work in agricultural cooperatives or work camps to be reeducated. The South Vietnamese government’s decision to boycott the elections planned for 1956 compelled the North Vietnamese leadership to decide the priority it would give to reunification. By and large the DRV leadership decided to adhere to the decision to build socialism in the north while searching for some means to reunify the country. Debates in the VWP Central Committee in the mid-1950s, however, suggested that the leadership anticipated reunification to be realizable only after a military struggle. In 1959 the VWP shifted to a more activist approach and began to approve efforts to increase pressure on ngo dinh diem’s regime in the south. By this point a broad-based resistance movement against Diem had gained strength. In late 1960, largely at the behest of southern cadres, the National Liberation Front was created as an umbrella organization that rallied a broad range of anti-Diem resistance. The road to the reunification of Vietnam led the DRV to war against the United States, whose commitment to a noncommunist South Vietnam had grown steadily. Between 1965 and 1973 U.S. combat troops fought in the vietnam war. Some evidence suggests that Hanoi had begun infiltrating troops into the south in late 1964. Supplies and men flowed south along the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos and Cambodia. In January 1973, after several rounds of peace talks, the Paris Peace Accords ended U.S. involvement. The cease-fire between north and south broke down, and the war resumed. On April 30, 1975, victorious North Vietnamese forces captured Saigon and achieved Ho’s dream of a unified Vietnam. In his honor Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in 1976, in a country now renamed the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. See also Johnson, Lyndon B.; Vietnam, republic of. Further reading: Duiker, William. The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam. 2d. ed. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996; Duiker, William. Sacred War: Nationalism and Revolution in a Divided Vietnam. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1995; Jamieson, Neil L. Understanding Vietnam. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993; Ruane, Kevin. War and Revolution in Vietnam, 1930–1975. London: UCL, 1998; Tarling, Nicholas. The Cambridge History of Southeast
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Asia: From World War II to the Present. Vol. 2, pt. 2: World War II to the Present. Paperback ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Soo Chun Lu
Vietnam, Republic of The Republic of Vietnam was the portion of southern Vietnam that fought against communist North Vietnam in the second indochina war (vietnam war). It was created after the defeat of previous colonial masters, the French, and ceased to exist with the seizure of its capital, Saigon, by communist forces. Southern Vietnam was historically the home of the Cham peoples. When the French arrived in the 19th century, they made the southern part of the country, which they named Cochin-China, a full colony. It was, therefore, more firmly French-run than the rest of Indochina. Saigon was more thoroughly internationalized than the remainder of the country, and the people were more familiar with the capitalist system and French culture. The French created the state of Vietnam in 1949, which centered on the CochinChina colony and had the emperor as head of state. The defeat of the French and the Geneva Conference of 1954 established the state as occupying the territory south of the 17th parallel. In the following year the Republic of Vietnam was announced after Emperor Bao Dai was deposed. The first president of the republic was ngo dinh diem, who had been involved in the ousting of the emperor and who adopted an authoritarian approach to ruling the country. When Diem was deposed and killed, a brief interlude under Nguyen Cao Ky was succeeded by military rule, which began in 1965. In 1967 nguyen van thieu was elected president and then was reelected unopposed four years later. Despite the massive outlay of lives and materiél to resist the North Vietnamese, after the withdrawal of U.S. troops in 1973 as a result of the Paris Accord, the capture of Saigon in 1975 seems to have been inevitable. Although the Republic of Vietnam had developed a sophisticated bicameral parliamentary system, its existence was tainted more or less throughout by corruption and by the authoritarian rule of its presidents and rulers. A number of people have characterized the state as little more than a puppet U.S. state, and certainly it would not have lasted so long without largescale U.S. military support. However, it would be
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scarcely fair to consider the presidents of the republic, notably Nguyen Van Thieu, as mere puppets. Indeed Nguyen Van Thieu was often trenchant in his criticisms of U.S. leaders and intransigent in pursuing policies of his own devising. See also vietnam, democratic republic of. Further reading: Addington, Larry H. America’s War in Vietnam: A Short Narrative History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000; Tang, Truong Nhu. A Vietcong Memoir: An Inside Account of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath. New York: Vintage, 1986. John Walsh
Vietnam War The Vietnam War was America’s longest war. In total, the conflict in Vietnam lasted from 1946 to 1975. The official dates of U.S. involvement were 1964–73. The Vietnam War was extremely costly and destructive and had a profound effect on both the soldiers who fought it and the civilians who lived through it. The Tonkin Gulf Resolution was signed by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 and gave him the power to wage war in Vietnam. Throughout the 1940s and into the 1950s, the Vietminh under ho chi minh were fighting the French colonial presence in Vietnam. By 1954 the United States was paying 80 percent of the cost of France’s war against the Vietminh. In July 1954 the French and the Vietminh signed an armistice in Geneva, which divided Vietnam at the 17th parallel. Ho Chi Minh controlled the north, and Vietnam-wide elections were to be held in 1956. The United States did not sign the agreement, and plans were put in place to stop Ho Chi Minh’s plans to conquer all of Vietnam. President Dwight Eisenhower was afraid that if Vietnam fell to communism, the rest of Southeast Asia would follow. Not wanting Vietnam to be under the control of a communist leader, the United States pushed aside the French puppet leader and replaced him with ngo dinh diem, a Vietnamese nationalist. Many were confident that Diem could rally Vietnam against communism. The United States increased aid to South Vietnam, and the first U.S. advisers arrived there in early 1955. These decisions laid the groundwork for the Vietnam War. Ho Chi Minh was frustrated that Vietnam was not yet independent and unified, so in 1957 the Vietminh in South Vietnam began to revolt against the Diem regime. In May 1959 communist North Vietnam came to the
aid of the revolutionaries in the south. As a result, the United States increased its aid to South Vietnam. In South Vietnam conditions deteriorated rapidly. Diem’s regime never gained popular support. In 1960 anti-Diem communists and Buddhists created the National Liberation Front, with the Vietcong as its military wing, and began operations against Diem’s forces. The United States had pledged in the 1954 south east asia treaty organization pact to defend South Vietnam against external aggression, and President john f. kennedy lived up to that obligation. To Kennedy and other politicians, Vietnam was another cold war battlefield. Signs of weakness would lead the Soviet Union to believe that the United States was weak and vulnerable. As such, South Vietnam also became a testing facility for counterinsurgency units. The U.S. Green Berets advised the South Vietnamese army, and civilians provided medical and technical aid and economic and political reforms, all in an effort to “win the hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese. There was a general consensus in Kennedy’s administration about the consequences of losing Vietnam to communism; there were others who feared the worst. Undersecretary of State George Ball told Kennedy that within five years there would be 300,000 U.S. soldiers in Vietnam. However, Ball was incorrect: within five years nearly 400,000 soldiers were in Vietnam. Even with his advisers calling for escalation, Kennedy proceeded cautiously. By the middle of 1962 he had increased the number of military advisers from 700 to 12,000. He added another 5,000 in 1963. As the number of casualties increased, the prospects of withdrawing became increasingly difficult. In the face of so many problems, Kennedy gave the order to overthrow Diem. On November 1, South Vietnamese military officials, with the assistance of the U.S. embassy in Saigon, arrested Diem and his brother. While in custody, both were assassinated. However, the plan backfired. A number of inexperienced military officers took command in South Vietnam with little support and were unable to govern effectively. The country sank deeper into trouble and the role of the United States increased. After President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, the issue of Vietnam fell to President lyndon b. johnson; Johnson was deeply troubled over Vietnam and had been for some time. During the rest of the months leading up to the November 1964 election, Johnson tried all he could to keep the issue of Vietnam in the background, fearing it would hurt his chances of being elected. In many of his conversations with Robert McNamara, secretary of defense, Johnson
discussed doing all he could to keep the public thinking that he had made no final decisions on Vietnam. Some advisers were trying to give Johnson suggestions for getting out of Vietnam and still saving face; meanwhile, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were advising him that preventing the loss of South Vietnam was of overriding importance to the United States. Robert McNamara visited Saigon. He reported to Johnson that conditions had worsened there since General Khanh took over power in January 1964. Many officials there favored increased pressure on North Vietnam, including air strikes. McNamara, aware of Johnson’s wish to be ambiguous to the public regarding his stance, offered to take a lot of the heat. Johnson, knowing the conditions in Vietnam, understood that in order to achieve the ambitious conditions set out in McNamara’s policy statement, an escalation of military power in the country would have to be undertaken. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was passed in Congress on August 7, 1964. It provided the legal authority for Johnson to escalate the Vietnam War. On August 2 North Vietnamese gunboats had attacked the USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin. On August 4 the Maddox and another vessel, the USS Turner Joy, reported being under attack. Many doubts exist about whether or not the second attack actually took place, but the Johnson administration used it as a pretext for retaliation. Johnson ordered the first U.S. air strikes against North Vietnam. The resolution was passed 88-2. Johnson won the 1964 presidential election by a landslide. In addition to his domestic agenda, the great society, Vietnam was the largest issue he dealt with. Still relying on trusted advisers like Richard Russell, even though he would not take his advice, Johnson had countless discussions about Vietnam. Johnson’s rationalization was what he considered a treaty commitment inherited from Eisenhower and Kennedy. No matter what Johnson said to him, Russell stuck to his conviction that Vietnam was not the place to invest U.S. blood and treasure. Johnson told Everett Dirksen, Senate minority leader, that communist propaganda, his advice from Eisenhower, and the domino theory informed his policies with regard to Vietnam. major escalation After July 1965 the war escalated into a major international conflict. The North Vietnamese army numbered in the thousands, and they supported an estimated National Liberation Front force of 80,000. From 6,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam in July 1965, the number increased to over 536,000 by 1968, with an additional 800,000 South Vietnamese troops. Both sides played to
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The social activism and antiwar movements of the late 1960s spurred many protests against the Vietnam War.
their own strengths. The United States had great wealth, modern weapons, and a highly trained military force under the command of General William Westmoreland. Using bombing raids and search-and-destroy missions, it sought to force the opponent to surrender. The National Liberation Front and the North Vietnamese army, under the exceptional direction of vo nguyen giap, used a different strategy altogether. They were lightly armed and knew the area. They relied on the guerrilla warfare tactics of stealth and mobility. Giap wanted to wear down the United States and its allies by harassment missions. Between 1965 and 1967 the United States did untold amounts of damage to Vietnam. Bombing increased from 63,000 tons in 1965 to over 226,000 tons in 1967. The U.S. military strategy failed to produce clear results. The war dragged on, and opposition to the conflict in the United States intensified. Countless protests took place in cities and on college campuses. Troops who returned home were often treated poorly, quite the opposite of the heroes’ welcome experienced by returning veterans of World War II. The Tet Offensive of 1968 brought a new phase of the war. In late 1967 the North Vietnamese launched operations in remote areas to draw U.S. forces away from cities. On January 31, 1968, the National Liberation Front launched massive attacks on the unsecured urban areas. They led strikes on 36 provincial capitals, 5 major cities in the south, and 64 district capitals. They also attacked the U.S. embassy in Saigon and captured Hue for a period. Although the Tet Offensive failed overall, it had a profound psychological effect on the people of the United States. Protests increased, and murmurs that
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the war was unwinnable became much more audible. As a result of developments in Vietnam and widespread unrest across the country, Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection in 1968. After the Tet Offensive, ensuing peace talks failed to produce any agreement. The problem of Vietnam fell to the fourth U.S. president involved in the Vietnam conflict, richard nixon. In 1969 he expanded the war into neighboring Cambodia, a move that he kept from the press, further increasing the gap in the people’s trust in the government when he went public about the decision in 1970. The domestic backlash led to a new wave of protests, during which four students died at Kent State University in Ohio, and two more at Jackson State University in Mississippi. Nixon’s involvement in Vietnam was marked by increased domestic opposition. After the Cambodian affair, Congress repealed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. The trial of Lieutenant William Calley, commander of a unit that murdered 500 South Vietnamese civilians at My Lai, raised fundamental moral questions about the war. Finally, the Pentagon Papers were published in 1971, which deepened public distrust in the government. Polls showed that more than 70 percent of Americans felt that the United States had erred when it sent troops into Vietnam. During 1972–73 the U.S. phase of the war ended. A peace agreement was signed in Paris on January 27, 1973. It allowed for the extraction of U.S. military forces from Vietnam and the return of U.S. prisoners of war but did not address the fundamental issues over which the war had been fought. North Vietnam was allowed to leave 150,000 troops in the south, and the future of South Vietnam was not directly and clearly spelled out. Fighting broke out between the north and the south, and the U.S. Congress drastically cut military and economic aid to South Vietnam. When Richard Nixon resigned because of the watergate scandal, the Vietnam War issue was passed to its fifth president, gerald ford. Congress rejected his request for $722 million in aid for South Vietnam, agreeing to only $300 million in emergency aid to extract the remaining U.S. personnel from the south. The climax of this came on May 1, 1975, with a harrowing rooftop helicopter evacuation. The total cost of the war was extensive. South Vietnamese military casualties exceeded 350,000, and estimates of North Vietnamese losses range between 500,000 and 1 million. Civilian deaths cannot be accurately counted but ran into the millions. More than 58,000 U.S. troops were killed, and over 300,000 were
injured. The total financial cost of the war exceeded $167 billion. Many of Johnson’s Great Society reforms were cut back because of the increased military expenditures. Veterans returning home experienced long-lasting effects, which ranged from flashbacks to posttraumatic stress disorder to the effects of exposure to chemicals. Furthermore, the war saw no tangible results. Once the United States evacuated Saigon, the north overran the city, and Vietnam was united under communist rule. Further reading: Beschloss, Michael. Reaching for Glory: Lyndon Johnson’s Secret White House Tapes, 1964–1965. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001; Herring, George C. America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996; ———. LBJ and Vietnam: A Different Kind of War. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994; McMahon, Robert. Major Problems in the History of the Vietnam War. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003. James E. Seelye, Jr.
Vo Nguyen Giap
(1911– ) Vietnamese military leader In the history of communist Vietnam, Giap is second only to ho chi minh in the impact he had. Ho named Giap commander in chief of the Vietminh forces fighting the French at the end of World War II. Giap orchestrated the defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1953 and was named minister of defense of the democratic republic of vietnam. Giap was also the chief military strategist against the U.S. led vietnam war. Giap was born in central Annam, just north of the 17th parallel, on August 25, 1911, to Nguyen Thi Kien and Vo Quang Nghiem. His early life was spent in one of the poorest sections of Vietnam. However, Giap’s father was a member of the tiny middle class of his region, a rice farmer who tilled his own land and rented another small portion, in addition to being a practitioner of traditional Asian medicine. From age five until eight, he attended school in An Xa. The school was supervised by the French but taught by Vietnamese. In 1923 he received a certificate for finishing elementary studies, which was not very common. The following year he took the entrance examination to qualify for additional education at Hue but failed. He studied diligently and passed the exam in 1925. He attended school at the Quoc Hoc, which was a known
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seedbed of revolution; his leadership abilities and intelligence helped him excel as a student. Giap then became a history teacher, a profession he retained throughout the 1930s. At the same time, he was active in various revolutionary movements. He joined the Communist Party in 1934, and assisted in founding the Democratic Front in 1936. He was a devoted scholar of military tactics and studied Napoleon and the ancient Chinese military tactician Sunzi extensively. The French outlawed communism in 1939, so Giap, along with Ho Chi Minh, fled to China, where he studied guerrilla warfare. From 1939 until around 1947 Giap was busy developing and directing the military plan that defeated the French and eventually caused the United States to abandon its efforts in Vietnam. It was a multifaceted plan that included gathering popular support for his efforts and mobilizing the people to join the communist cause. Giap’s military strategies caused millions of people to lose their lives, including millions of Vietnamese, both North and South, and over 58,000 Americans. Many American soldiers were impressed with the diligence of the Vietnamese, the skill of the North Vietnamese army, and their discipline. Much of this was due to the leadership of Giap. When the Socialist Republic of Vietnam was established in 1975, when North Vietnam conquered the south and united the nation, Giap served as deputy prime minister and minister of defense. After his retirement, he wrote several books. In 1992, he was awarded the Golden Star Award, Vietnam’s highest decorative honor. Further reading: Currey, Cecil B. Victory at Any Cost: The Genius of Vietnam’s Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap. Washington, DC: Brassey’s, Inc., 1997; O’Neill, Robert. General Giap: Politician and Strategist. New York: Praeger Books, 1969; Vo Nguyen Giap and Van Tien Dung. How We Won the War. Philadelphia: Recon Publishing, 1976. James E. Seelye, Jr.
Vorster, B. J.
(1915–1983) South African prime minister Balthazar Johannes (John) Vorster was South African prime minister from 1966 to 1978. He is perhaps best known for having legislated into power some of apartheid’s most discriminatory and racial policies. Born on December 13, 1915, in Uitenhage, Eastern Cape, John
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Vorster was the 13th child of a wealthy sheep farmer. After receiving his primary and secondary education in the Eastern Cape, he went on to receive his bachelor of law degree from Stellenbosch University and set up a law practice in Port Elizabeth in the late 1930s. With the onset of World War II, he ardently opposed South Africa’s involvement in support of the Allies by becoming a member of the pro-Nazi Ossewa-Brandwag. His support of the Nazi regime under Adolf Hitler landed Vorster in jail during much of World War II. However, this did little to deter his radical ideology, and he maintained that the dictatorial regime in Germany at the time was a more productive and suitable model for South African governance than the parliamentary system already in place. When Vorster was released from jail in 1944, his right-wing political and social views led him to join the growing South African National Party. Vorster worked his way up the ranks of the party cadre, and in 1953 he was elected to parliament in Cape Town as a National Party representative. After one session in parliament he was appointed deputy minister of education in 1958; he rigidly enforced apartheid’s Bantu education policies. Under Prime Minister Verwoerd he became minister of justice in 1961. During this time, the government sent South African Defense Force soldiers to support Ian Smith’s white regime in rhodesia, with the popular support of most of white South Africa. Vorster succeeded Prime Minister Verwoerd unopposed after Verwoerd was assassinated in 1966. His brief and uneventful time as a cabinet minister under Verwoerd meant that he knew little about the workings of departments other than his own. He knew little about the African population and the inner workings of the huge departments that governed their lives. However, during the year he came to succeed Verwoerd, Vorster combined the Justice portfolio with that of Police and Prisons, strengthening the power of the department and the South African Police Service. Although Vorster continued with the basic tenets of separate development policies, he alienated extremist factions of the National Party early in his prime ministership by pursuing diplomatic relations with African countries and by agreeing to let black African diplomats live in white areas. However, Vorster’s tenure as prime minister was marked mainly by an increase in racial discrimination and violence in all of South Africa, including an increase in detention without trial. Although Vorster’s government is mainly known for streamlining and harshly enforcing apartheid’s policies, his foreign policy initiatives are generally viewed
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as moderate and conciliatory. He began by unofficially supporting Rhodesia, which at the time was struggling to gain independence from British rule under prime minister Ian Smith. Although publicly he espoused the white public opinion in South Africa, he did not wish to alienate potential political allies such as the United States by extending diplomatic recognition to Rhodesia. He exerted his pressure as a hegemon in the region by persuading Smith to negotiate with Mozambique during the regional civil war that was ongoing in southern Africa. Vorster began cutting off vital supplies to Smith and even went so far as to refuse calls made by the Rhodesian prime minister. International pressure continued to squeeze South Africa for the remainder of apartheid. Vorster, in an attempt to regain South African public approval, invaded Angola in the 1970s in order to protect South-West Africa (present-day Namibia) against rebel attempts by Angola to invade the country for diamonds. Continuing his conciliatory initiatives in September 1974, Vorster announced in Cape Town his famous Détente with Africa policy. Despite regional efforts in Angola at the time, Vorster promised cooperation with the leaders of neighboring black African nations. The negotiations over Rhodesia and attempts to make peace with black Africa were predicated on the hopes that such maneuvers would postpone Vorster’s day of reckoning in South Africa. His hope was that emerging Zimbabwean and Mozambican states would feel indebted to South Africa for its role in liberating these countries. The 1970s were a turbulent time for Vorster. He harshly suppressed the Soweto uprising in 1976, which would draw more international pressure in the form of economic and social sanctions. He granted independence to the Transkei in 1976 and Bophuthatswana in 1977 in accordance with apartheid’s separate development policies, although economic development within them would stagnate. He maintained the view that Africans could exercise political rights only in their homelands regardless of where they actually lived. On September 12, 1977, Steve Biko, the Black Consciousness leader, died in horrifying circumstances while in police custody. Vorster’s response was personally to ban 18 organizations. This step helped him to an overwhelming victory in the general election of November 1977.
However, Vorster did take the first, unconscious steps toward a more equal South Africa. Vorster’s minister of sport and recreation, Dr. Piet Koornhof, managed to secure some limited desegregation of sport by invoking the fiction of multinationalism: Each national group had to play sport separately, but they might play against each other in multinational events. Similarly higher-class hotels and restaurants might acquire multinational status and thereby admit people of all races. An elaborate system of permits for mixed gatherings, events, and venues was initiated. Vorster saw many apartheid policies as unnecessary and began the slow process of weeding them out. In the late 1970s Vorster was implicated in what became known as Muldergate (so named after Dr. Connie Mulder, the information cabinet minister at the center of the scandal). Although Vorster was certainly a victim of the scandal, in a sense the scandal arose from circumstances that he himself had perpetrated. Vorster was implicated in the use of a slush fund to buy the loyalty of The Citizen, the only major English-language newspaper favorable to the National Party. The official investigation concluded that Vorster, in conjunction with the head of the South African Police Services, General H. J. van den Bergh, had not only conspired to manipulate The Citizen but also to buy the U.S.-based Washington Star. It was discovered that in 1973 Vorster had agreed to Mulder’s plan to shift about 64 million rands from the defense budget for a series of propaganda campaigns. In what became a National Party embarrassment, a commission of inquiry finally concluded in 1979 that Vorster had been aware of the fund and had tolerated it. After the scandal, Vorster retired from the position of prime minister in 1978. Vorster died in Cape Town in 1983. See also mandela, nelson. Further reading: Deegan, Heather. The Politics of the New South Africa: Apartheid and After. New York: Longman, 2001; D’Oliveira, John. Vorster—The Man. Johannesburg: Ernst Stanton Publications, 1977; Meredith, Martin. In the Name of Apartheid: South Africa in the Postwar Period. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1988; Rees, Mervyn. Muldergate: The Story of the Info Scandal. Johannesburg: Macmillan South Africa, 1980. Rian Wall
W Wajed, Sheikh Hasina (1947– ) Bangladeshi leader
Sheikh Hasina Wajed is the president and head of the Bangladesh Awami League. She is the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the popular Bangladeshi leader who played a leading role in the founding of Bangladesh. Sheikh Hasina Wajed was one of only two members of the Mujib family to survive a bloody August 15, 1975, military coup. Sheikh Hasina Wajed was born on September 28, 1947, in the city of Tungipara in the Gopalganj district of Bangladesh. She earned her B.A. from Dhaka University in 1973. During her school days, she became active in politics, becoming the chief of the Student Union at the Government Intermediate College for Women in 1966. She and other members of her family were imprisoned several times by Pakistan’s military government leading up to the Bangladesh liberation struggle in 1971. After the assassination of Mujibur Rahman in 1975, Wajed was forced by the military government of General Ziaur Rahman to live in exile until 1981. In 1981 she became the president of the Bangladesh Awami League. With an absolute majority secured by her Awami League in the 1996 election, Wajed became the prime minister of Bangladesh on June 23. She took many measures to alleviate rural poverty, enhance per capita income, create job opportunities, and increase agricultural production. She also introduced new
welfare schemes, innovative housing programs in rural areas that reversed the trend of migration from rural to urban areas. She was the leader of the opposition in the Bangladeshi parliament from 1986 to 1987, 1991 to 1993, and 2001 forward. Under her stewardship, the Awami League boycotted parliament until June 2004, accusing the government of Khaleda Zia of corruption and nepotism. Wajed is a fierce, enigmatic leader who believes in political parties based in the needs of the masses and in mobilizing the party cadre to win elections. Coming from a political family and with a father who was a highly revered personality in Bangladesh politics, Wajed is a political force to be reckoned with and is likely to play a prominent role in Bangladeshi politics for the foreseeable future. She is also an author of repute. See also Bangladesh, People’s Republic of; Pakistan People’s Party. Further reading: Habib, Zafarullah. The Zia Episode in Bangladesh Politics. Dhaka: University Press of Bangladesh, 1997; Makasudra, Rahamana Mohammed. Politics and Development of Rural Local Self-Government in Bangladesh. Dhaka: Devika Publications, 2000; Rafiuddin, Ahmad. Religious Identity and Politics: Essays on Bangladesh. New York: International Academic Publishers, 2002. Mohammed Badrul Alam
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Warsaw Pact Warsaw Pact is the informal title given to the Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO), a group of Eastern European nations and the Soviet Union pledged to mutual assistance and defense. In 1955 the member nations signed the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance. The Warsaw Pact’s objectives from its inception to its demise in 1991 changed, but throughout that time, the organization served as the means by which the Soviet Union bound its Eastern European client states together militarily. The Warsaw Pact agreement replaced a series of bilateral treaties of defense and friendship between the Soviet Union and these nations. Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania joined with the Soviet Union. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (nato) had been in existence since 1949, but NATO announced in May 1955 that it would include West Germany as a member; this prompted the formation of the Warsaw Pact. Thus only 10 years after the end of World War II, the Soviet Union not only was engaged in a cold war with the West but also faced a resurgent Germany. It was not only an external threat that moved the Soviets to change their agreements with these nations, but there was the matter of internal stability as well. Following World War II, there had been significant armed resistance to the Soviets, who had entered these nations while advancing against the retreating German armies. Polish anti-Soviet partisans opposed the Soviets until well into the late 1940s. Demonstrations against the Soviets caused real concern about the stability of the communist elites running these countries. By bringing in Soviet troops to occupy these countries as part of Warsaw Pact activities, the Soviet Union allowed itself to more easily defend any attacks that might come from the West and, at the same time, to keep these friendly regimes stable. East Germany joined in 1956. Yugoslavia did not join at any time. The treaty clearly stated that national sovereignty would be respected and that all of the signatories were independent. The treaty was to last for 20 years, with an automatic 10-year extension. Each member nation could unilaterally leave the organization; the reality proved to be very different. In 1956 the Hungarian government of Imre Nagy declared that it would no longer be allied with the Soviet Union but would become a neutral. Part of this neutrality process would be its withdrawal from the pact. Regardless of any promises, the Soviet Union acted quickly to defeat this rebellion. Using the request of
some Hungarian Communist Party members as an invitation to act, Soviet infantry and armor invaded the country and after a two-week struggle replaced Imre Nagy’s government with a more compliant government under János Kádár. Although the Soviets cited the danger of breaking up the alliance to justify the invasion, it was only Soviet troops that took part in the operation. In the early days of the Warsaw Pact, the nature of the alliance was somewhat vague. Each of the member nations, while influenced by the Soviet Union, still had a certain amount of independence in its tactical doctrine and did not coordinate its training with either the Soviet Union or other members. That situation would change in the coming years. From 1961 on, combined exercises were conducted, and Soviet-manufactured weapons and equipment were purchased by the member nations. High-ranking Soviet officers were assigned to the defense ministries of Warsaw Pact members to ensure a uniformity of training and to keep the national militaries subservient to and a part of the armed forces of the Soviet Union. Although the Warsaw Pact gained cohesion in terms of command and control, there were movements that served to weaken it. In 1962 there was another defection from the Warsaw Pact, this time a successful one. In this case it involved Albania strengthening its ties to China and distancing itself from the Soviet Union. Because Albania did not border on any other Warsaw Pact member, the Soviet Union had no choice but to accept this action. The Soviets thus lost access to a Mediterranean port. Albania’s formal defection in 1968 merely ratified what already existed. independent streaks Another unhappy member of the alliance was Romania. This country managed to conduct a very successful balancing act in staying within the alliance, exercising a surprising degree of independence, and not paying a very high price for its actions. Romania’s independent streak began as early as 1958, when it stated that Soviet troops were not welcome on its territory, continuing through 1968, when it would not participate in the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Romania’s position was that the pact existed only for self-defense and not to maintain communist elites in the separate nations. In part because Romania was loyal in other ways and because it was not close to the potential front with Germany, this independent streak went unpunished. Not every nation was so fortunate. In late 1967 a reform movement within the Czechoslovak Communist Party caused a major change in leadership. These events
were closely monitored by the Soviet leadership. After the attempted defection by Hungary 10 years before, Albania’s departure, and Romania’s distancing itself, the Soviets were concerned that any reform or liberalization might weaken their control over this state. The continued freedom of the press and freedom of expression forced the Soviets to act. On the night of August 20–21, Soviet troops, assisted by forces from Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, and Poland, invaded. Combined Warsaw Pact exercises had been taking place that summer, and the Warsaw Pact nations had been able to stage their invasion and subsequently move quickly into the country. The Czechoslovak government was changed, and there was no more discussion of changing Czechoslovakia’s role in the Warsaw Pact. Thirteen years later, the Warsaw Pact’s invasion of Czechoslovakia influenced another nation. This time it was Poland, where vigorous opposition appeared in the form of the labor union Solidarity. By the end of 1981, after almost two years of liberalization, the Communist government of Poland imposed martial law. Union leaders were imprisoned, the union was declared illegal, and Polish soldiers took over many of the government’s functions. The rationale for this move was that the imposition of martial law by Polish authorities would eliminate the possibility of a repetition of the events of 1968. soviet leadership As the 1980s wore on, there were significant changes in Soviet leadership. Leonid Brezhnev, who had ordered the invasion of Czechoslovakia and threatened the same for Poland, died in 1982. He was succeeded by Yuri Andropov, who had, earlier in his career, restored order to Hungary after its unsuccessful rebellion in 1956. Andropov, died in 1984 and was for a few months succeeded by Konstantin Chernenko. With the accession of Mikhail Gorbachev to power in 1985, relationships between the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact slowly changed. That year the Warsaw Pact came up for renewal, and the members agreed to another 20-year term to be followed by a 10-year extension, as had been done 30 years before. It became recognized that there would be no more interventions such as the ones that had taken place in Czechoslovakia and had been threatened in Poland. The Warsaw Pact still, however, existed as a force with over 6,300,000 soldiers—20 percent of whom were non-Soviet. The resolution of the Euromissile crisis and changing politics within the Soviet Union were leading to other changes. At the end of 1988 Gor bachev announced that there would be troop withdraw-
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als from East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. The power elites did not look forward to this, as their position within their own countries had been strengthened against dissidents and other opposition by the presence of the Soviet army. Early in 1989 the Hungarian government removed its barbed wire barriers along its border with Austria, and Solidarity scored well in a partially free election. Before the year was out, the regimes had changed in Bulgaria, Romania, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia. Although there were some attempts to keep the Warsaw Pact alive as a political organization, the Warsaw Pact ended in 1991. Eight years later three former members of the Warsaw Pact—Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary—joined NATO. In 2004 former members Bulgaria, Romania, and Slovakia joined, as did three former republics of the Soviet Union—Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. The Warsaw Pact never functioned as smoothly as desired. There was a great deal of distrust between the Soviet Union and the member states and among the member states themselves. Several of these countries had not enjoyed good relations before World War II and still harbored ill feelings toward each other. Also, although the Soviet Union, could compel these nations to buy Soviet equipment and essentially to become part of the Soviet army, they could not force complete obedience in all matters. Despite Soviet demands that pact members buy substantial amounts of military equipment, many of the nations refused to do so. The purchase of military equipment presented another difficulty. Arms purchases would bring in cash desired by the Soviet Union, and it wanted these nations to field equipment compatible with Soviet issue. On the other hand, the Soviets did not want other pact members to have armies, air forces, or navies that could present obstacles to the Soviet Union. Although the Warsaw Pact sent advisers and provided military aid to Soviet clients, there never was a conflict between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. To predict that pact forces would have fought unreservedly to protect the Soviet Union and socialism is an unrealistic assumption. See also Hungarian revolt (1956); Prague Spring; Soviet Union, dissolution of the. Further reading: Faringdon, Hugh. Strategic Geography: NATO, the Warsaw Pact, and the Superpowers. London and New York: Routledge, 1989; Holden, Gerard. The End of an Alliance: Soviet Policy and the Warsaw Pact. Frankfurt am Main: Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, 1990; Mastny, Vojtech. A Cardboard Castle? An Inside History of the Warsaw Pact, 1955–1991. New York: Central European University
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Press, 2005; Nelson, Daniel N. Alliance Behavior in the Warsaw Pact. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1986. Robert N. Stacy
Watergate scandal Watergate is an impressive hotel, apartment, and office complex that overlooks the Potomac River near an old canal lock. It was built between 1964 and 1971. The name evolved to become an all-embracing label for political corruption, intrigue, and the misuse of presidential authority. Watergate, in the lexicon of U.S. politics, is simply synonymous with scandal. In the period from 1972 to 1974 the scandal emerged as an interconnected series of events and deeds that would destroy the Richard Nixon presidency and lead to his resignation on August 9, 1974. In its wake, Watergate produced a national crisis in leadership and a lasting sense of national betrayal. The Watergate crisis began with a burglary on June 17, 1972. A security guard discovered a suspicious tape holding a stairwell door open, and this prompted him to contact Washington police. The police discovered and arrested on the scene Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez, James W. McCord, Jr., and Frank Sturgis. The men were in the process of breaking into the Democratic National Committee Headquarters. They also had wiretapping equipment. McCord, a former CIA operative, was the chief of security at the Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP, or CREEP), and in his possession was the telephone number of E. Howard Hunt, a possible incriminating direct link to the White House. After a White House dismissal of the affair, the burglary could have passed into obscurity in this 1972 presidential election year if there had not been continuing media attention, driven by the efforts of Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward. Making use of FBI sources, the reporters launched a deep probe of the events. The outcome was that the burglary began to appear as one part of a complex dirty-tricks campaign by Nixon cronies. The basis for such suspicions rested largely with E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, who were tied to the Special Investigations Unit of the White House, known as the “Plumbers.” This group was active in undermining administration opponents through a variety of nefarious schemes such as breaking into the offices of Daniel Ellsberg, a former Pentagon and State
Department employee. As the future would reveal, these actions would have unfortunate consequences for the president. The Watergate burglary itself had the approval of former attorney general John Mitchell and the support of leading White House personnel such as Charles Colson and John Ehrlichman, in addition to the president’s campaign manager, Jeb Magruder. Few believed that any of these men would have acted without the personal approval of the president. The Watergate burglars, along with Liddy and Hunt, went on trial in January 1973. All pleaded guilty except McCord and Liddy. All were convicted of burglary, wiretapping, and conspiracy. The defendants initially refused to talk, and the judge, John Sirica, ordered long sentences unless there was greater cooperation. This brought about McCord’s admission that the campaign was behind the burglary and had arranged payments to guarantee silence. With the McCord admission, the political stakes were considerably raised, leading to a Senate investigation chaired by Senator Sam Ervin. Watergate was now on the national agenda, and White House staff faced subpoenas to testify. Nixon’s close advisers H. R. Haldeman and Ehrlichman resigned, and White House counsel John Dean was fired. A new attorney general, Elliot Richardson, was also appointed. Richardson appointed Archibald Cox to head an independent inquiry. The Senate investigation was televised from May 17 until August 7, 1973, and many former White House officials testified, including John Dean. The testimonies produced disastrous results for the president. The situation became even more complex after a White House official, Alexander Butterfield, admitted the existence of a White House taping system, which seemed to offer a way of finding the truth. The tapes then became part of the subpoena process. Nixon thought that this particular intrusion represented an attack on executive privilege. He ordered the attorney general to dismiss Cox if he didn’t cancel the subpoena. This led to what has come to be known as the “Saturday Night Massacre,” which produced the resignation of Richardson and his deputy, William Ruckelshaus. Nixon appointed a new special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, and as a desperate compromise gesture released the tapes in an edited form. The tapes seemed to cause not less but more distress for Nixon, particularly after it was revealed that there had been an 18-minute erasure as well as many additional erasures. Ultimately, the issue of the tapes was resolved on July 24, 1974, when the Supreme Court in its decision
United States v. Nixon denied the presidential claim of executive privilege. Nixon’s position throughout 1974 had also been progressively undercut through an ever-increasing series of guilty pleas by White House associates. In January campaign aide Herbert Porter admitted lying to the FBI; in February Nixon’s lawyer, Herbert Kalmbach, pleaded guilty to illegal electioneering; and in March the so-called Watergate Seven were all indicted for conspiring to interfere with the Watergate investigation. To make matters worse, other Watergate grand jury indictments followed in April when Ed Reinecke, a lieutenant governor of California and a Nixon campaigner, was charged with three counts of perjury. Also in April Dwight Chapin, Nixon’s appointments secretary, admitted perjury and lying to the Senate and a grand jury. The situation for Nixon was now without redemption. The House of Representatives began preparations for impeachment following a July 27, 1974, vote of 27 to 11 by the House Judiciary Committee on obstruction of justice charges. Other impeachment articles followed on July 29 and 30. The release in early August of a damning tape from June 23, 1972, which revealed Nixon and Haldeman discussing possibilities for blocking FBI investigations, proved to be the final blow that toppled Nixon from power. Without support in the House and little promise of support in the Senate, Richard M. Nixon announced to the nation on August 8, 1974, that he would resign as of noon on August 9, 1974, becoming the first U.S. president to do so. He was succeeded by Gerald Ford. Ford, on September 8, pardoned Nixon and thus saved him from criminal prosecution. Until his death, Nixon maintained his innocence. Watergate poisoned the political waters of the nation and left a jaundiced, cynical view of politicians and their promises. When stripped of their offices and the emblems of power, the politicos appeared disgraceful, dishonest purveyors of power for power’s sake without regard for the well-being of the democracy. This would create a lasting legacy of paranoid suspicions and give rise to a climate receptive to conspiracy theories. On a more positive note, the events surrounding Watergate led to reforms in campaign financing as well as the passage of the Freedom of Information Act in 1986. The media became a much stronger voice, particularly as the nation moved toward news coverage on a 24-7 basis. This led to the quandary of instant analysis, often incorrect, which can shape policy and possibly undermine the best democratic interests of the nation.
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Richard Nixon (right) departs the White House after his resignation. His administration was devastated by the Watergate scandal.
The cult of personality and celebrity has now perhaps replaced the cult of power. See also presidential impeachment, U.S. Further reading: Bernstein, Carl, and Bob Woodward. All the President’s Men. New York: Pocket, 2005; Olson, Keith W. Watergate: Presidential Scandal that Shocked America. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2003; Schorr, Daniel. Introduction, Senate Watergate Report. New York: Carroll and Graf, 2005; Smalls, Melvin. The Presidency of Richard Nixon. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003; Woodward, Bob. The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate’s Deep Throat. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005. Theodore W. Eversole
Wen Jiabao (Wen Chia-Pao) (1942– ) Chinese politician
Wen Jiabao was born in Tianjin, China, and attended Nankai High School. He graduated from the Beijing Geological Institute, joined the Communist Party in 1965, and began his career in the Gansu provincial geological bureau. Wen moved to Beijing in the 1980s and advanced through the ranks of the General Office of the Central
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Committee of the Communist Party. He worked closely with Zhao Ziyang in the late 1980s and was demoted after Zhao’s fall from grace following the Tiananmen Square massacre. Unlike Zhao’s, Wen’s career recovered quickly, and he was able to continue to work under Jiang Zemin, becoming an alternate member of the Politburo in 1992. In 1998 premier Zhu Rongji entrusted him with oversight of agriculture, finance, and environment policies. Wen became premier of China in 2003, succeeding Zhu Rongji. He is noted for his encyclopedic knowledge, practical approach, and consensual management style. He has proven himself to be a political survivor and has built up a network of influential friends during his political career. Wen has shifted the focus of China’s economic policies from growth and development at all costs to consideration of social goals such as public health and education, more egalitarian development, and an awareness of the costs of development such as pollution and workers’ illness and injury. Wen has not been afraid to deal publicly with controversial matters involving public health and safety. In 2003 he ended public silence over the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak, which began in Guangdong Province in November 2002. He was also the first Chinese official to address the AIDS problem in China. AIDS is already a serious and growing problem in China, and some experts estimate that there will be 10–20 million cases by 2010 if the problem is not addressed aggressively. In his efforts to address rural poverty Wen indicated the seriousness of his concern by making numerous unannounced visits to rural areas, thus avoiding elaborate preparations by local officials to cover up problems that exist. Further reading: Grasso, June, Jay Corrin, and Michael Kort. Modernization and Revolution in China: From the Opium Wars to World Power. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2004; Hutchings, Graham. Modern China: A Guide to a Century of Change. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. Sarah Boslaugh
Western Saharan War Spain ruled the western Saharan region known as Río de Oro as part of its colonial empire. The region was sparsely populated by mostly Sunni Muslim nomadic peoples of mixed Berber and Arab ancestry who were Arabic speaking. The region contained some of the
world’s richest phosphate mines but was otherwise desperately poor. In the early 1970s the Polisario Front (Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia al Hamra and Río de Oro) initiated an armed nationalist struggle for independence from Spain. After the death of Francisco Franco, a committed imperialist, the new Spanish government granted the territory independence in 1975. Although the United Nations declared that the Sahrawi should have selfdetermination, Morocco and Mauritania both immediately claimed the territory. King Hassan II of Morocco launched the “Green March” of over 300,000 unarmed Moroccans to march into the territory and incorporate it into Morocco. Because of its rivalry with Morocco as well as its desire for access to a port on the Atlantic Ocean, Algeria supported the Polisario, supplying it with arms and assistance. The Polisario proclaimed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) in 1976. Recognized by some 70 nations, SADR became a full-fledged member of the African Union. The war between the Polisario, Morocco, and Mauritania lasted from 1975 to 1984. The Polisario was able to defeat Mauritania, which withdrew its claims in 1979, but it was largely defeated by Morocco, which obtained arms from the United States. Moroccan troops moved into the northern sector of the territory and occupied the huge phosphate mines at Bu Craa. The war and Moroccan occupation resulted in the displacement of over 200,000 Sahrawi, who continue to live in refugee camps in surrounding regions to the present day. By the early 1980s Morocco controlled the majority of the territory, and SADR administered the remainder as liberated territory. To protect its holdings, Morocco built a 380-mile earth wall studded with electronic sensors and antipersonnel radar provided by the United States. The wall effectively enclosed the Moroccanheld sections of Western Sahara. The United Nations called for a referendum, for the people to vote for independence or for union with Morocco. The Polisario supported the referendum, but Morocco moved in settlers, who probably now outnumber the indigenous Sahrawis, to the territory it held. Morocco argued that the settlers, presumably all in favor of union, should be allowed to vote in the proposed referendum. Not surprisingly, SADR and its supporters strongly rejected Morocco’s claim. Both the United Nations and the United States attempted to mediate but failed to break the impasse. It appeared that Morocco would refuse any referendum until it could guarantee a victory in the election. An esti-
World Bank
mated 160,000 Moroccan soldiers continued to occupy the territory, which had a population of some 267,000 Sahrawi people. In 1983 King Hassan II negotiated an agreement with Algeria, which then halted its support for the Polisario, although many Sahrawis remained refugees in Algeria and other neighboring countries. After Hassan’s death in 1999 his son King Muhammad VI announced his desire for a resolution to the problem, but he also opposed holding a referendum on independence. In 2005 riots by supporters of the referendum in Moroccan-held territory broke out; Moroccan forces quickly quelled the riots and repressed SADR supporters. Hence one of the longest liberation struggles in the contemporary era continued to be unresolved. Further reading: Hodges, Tony. The Western Sahara: The Roots of a Desert War. Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill, 1983; Shelley, Toby. Endgame in the Western Sahara: What Future for Africa’s Last Colony. London: Zed Books, 2004. Janice J. Terry
World Bank Founded at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in July 1944 by representatives of 44 governments, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), commonly known as the World Bank, was conceived as a mechanism through which financial resources could be funneled to Europe to aid in the rebuilding effort in the aftermath of World War II. Initially based solely in Washington, D.C. (where its world headquarters remains), and from its founding to the present day dominated by the United States, the World Bank played a key role in the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union: at first in western Europe, and then through its loans to nation-states in Asia, Africa, and Latin America (the so-called Third World), considered by the United States key sites in the struggle against international communism. From the 1950s the World Bank broadened its mandate to encompass economic development and poverty issues in Third World countries through its International Finance Corporation (IFC), its International Development Association (ADA), its International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), and its Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), which together with the IBRD compose the World Bank Group. In 2007 the World Bank
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Group had 185 member states, with close coordination between the activities of its five entities and some 40 percent of its staff based outside the United States. Its governing structure consists of a board of governors, with a representative from each member state; a board of executive directors; and a president. In the decades following its foundation, the World Bank underwent a number of broad shifts, from funding postwar reconstruction to large development projects in Third World countries to its current focus on the alleviation of poverty and sustainable development. Scholarly interpretations of the World Bank’s role in world affairs vary widely. Neoclassical and neoliberal economists and social scientists tend to interpret the World Bank in positive terms, as a force for progressive social change. In contrast, many leftleaning social scientists tend to view it as serving the interests of multinational corporations and facilitating the foreign policy goals of the world’s advanced industrial countries, particularly the United States. The bank itself acknowledges many of its past mistakes, particularly its support for massive “white elephant” projects in Africa and Latin America that lined the pockets of corrupt politicians and business owners while doing little to alleviate poverty or advance genuine economic development. Such projects included the Kariba Dam in Zambia and Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia) in the 1950s, which displaced and impoverished thousands of Tonga people; the Singrauli thermal coal mining projects in India (financed from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s and accused of causing massive environmental damage and human misery); and the Yacyreta Dam in Paraguay and Argentina (financed in the 1980s and early 1990s and denounced as an environmental catastrophe and a “monument to corruption”). Despite divergent interpretations, all observers agree that the World Bank and the closely affiliated International Monetary Fund, also founded at Bretton Woods in 1944, have been among the most important international financial entities of the postwar era. See also International Monetary Fund (imf). Further reading: Easterly, William R. The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001; Hunt, Diana. Economic Theories of Development: An Analysis of Competing Paradigms. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989. Michael J. Schroeder
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World Trade Center, September 11, 2001 The United States of America and, in fact, the world, would not be the same after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. The term 9/11 was added to the U.S. vocabulary, symbolizing armed aggression holding humankind for ransom. American Airlines Flight 11, United Airlines Flight 175, American Airlines Flight 77, and United Airlines Flight 93 were hijacked by al-Qaeda, a group owing allegiance to the militant Islamic leader Osama bin Laden. The aircraft, respectively, were crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center (WTC), the south tower of the WTC, the Pentagon headquarters, and a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. About 3,000 people died, and property worth billions of dollars was lost. Bin Laden, the son of Saudi Arabian construction tycoon Mohammed Awad bin Laden, was the mastermind behind the September 11 attacks. Bin Laden had a deep hatred of the U.S policy in the Middle East and called for the liberation of the region from the United States. previous target The United States had previously been the target of terrorist attacks such as the World Trade Center bombing (February 1993), a truck bomb at the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City (April 1995), bomb attacks on U.S. barracks in Dhahran (June 1996), the bombing of U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi (August 1998), a bomb attack on the USS Cole (October 2000), and year 2000 millennium attack plots. But these were not like September 11 in magnitude and precision. Bin Laden was linked with many terrorist attacks all over the world. The successful execution of the attack inside U.S. territory by 19 Islamic militants was a demonstration of the failure of U.S. intelligence. The terrorists dispatched by al-Qaeda passed through security checkpoints of airports easily and performed their mission. It was one of the greatest failures of U.S. intelligence since Pearl Harbor. The militants had visited the United States and stayed there. Targets, as well as the type of aircraft, were being modified until the final decision. The plan had begun with Operation Bojinka, which was conceived by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Ramzi Yousef as early as 1995 in Manila. While Khalid was in Afghanistan, he presented al-Qaeda with the argument that instead of using
aircraft loaded with explosives, commercial planes could be used to hit the targets. Nine planes were to be crashed into different targets such as the WTC, the Pentagon, the White House, and the Capitol. A 10th plane was to be hijacked by Khalid himself. It would be landed in the United States after all the male passengers were killed. Bin Laden decided to use four planes. The WTC, the Pentagon, and the United States Capitol were to be the targets. A new terrorist cell was established in Hamburg, Germany, and militants were chosen by bin Laden. Bin Laden was eager to carry out the plan. At a January 2000 meeting held in Kuala Lumpur, militants discussed the USS Cole bombing and the September 11 attacks. Some of the members had already been to the United States, renting apartments and undergoing training as students at flight schools. By June 2000 alMihdhar, al-Hazmi, Mohammed Atta, and Marwan al-Shehhi were already in the United States. Omar alBayoumi had been in San Diego, California, since 1995. The terrorists often changed their places of residence, spent money on airline tickets, and got driver’s licenses by obtaining mailboxes. In the final preparations, four teams were chosen and airline tickets were purchased. The first plane, AA Flight 11, crashed into the north tower of the WTC and had on board the hijackers Walid Al Shehri, Wail Alsheri, Mohammad Atta, Aabdul Alomari, and Satam Sugami. UA Flight 175 hit the south tower of the WTC and had on board Marawn Alshehhi, Fayez Ahmed, Mohald Alshehri, Hamza Al Ghamdi, and Ahmed Al Ghamdi. The Pentagon was hit by AA Flight 77, this third plane carrying Khalid al-Mihdhar, Majed Moqued, Nawaf Al Hazmi, and Salem Al Hazmi. Ahmed Al Haznawi, Ahmed Alnami, Ziad Jarrah, and Saeed Alghamdi had overpowered the fourth plane, UA Flight 93, which eventually crashed into the ground in Shanksville. Flight 11 crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46:40 a.m. local time and at 9:03:11 a.m. Flight 175 crashed into the south tower. Millions of people watched the live collapse of the north and south towers. The casualty figure was 2,986. shock around the world The whole world was shocked by the attacks. Some European countries observed three minutes of silence. Messages of sympathy poured in to the administration and the people of the United States. The United Nations, in Resolution 1368, expressed its support to the United States in defending its homeland. The member countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (nato) declared that the attack on the United States was an attack against all NATO members. The
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The September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon shocked the world. The ruins of the twin towers are seen in an aerial shot. The towers had previously been the target of a terrorist attack in 1993.
immediate reaction of shock and fear gave way to anger and vengeance afterward in the United States. President George W. Bush addressed the nation on the evening of September 11, saying that the United States was not going to be cowed by the acts of mass murder. The United States declared al-Qaeda the prime suspect, and bin Laden became a wanted man. Patriotism reached a new height, and sales of the U.S. flag soared. Donations to charitable organizations topped half a billion dollars within two weeks after September 11. Blood donations increased. A $40-billion emergency fund was granted by the U.S. Congress to tackle terrorism and help in recovery operations in New York and Washington after the attack. Counterterrorism laws were introduced by the Bush administration infringing on the personal liberty of citizens. A Council for Homeland Security was established for internal counterterrorism efforts. The USA Patriot Act empowered federal authorities to prosecute terrorism suspects and detain them without charges. The Information Awareness Office (IAO), created in 2002, initiated measures for collecting information pertaining to Internet activity, credit card purchase histories, air-
line ticket purchases, medical records, driver’s licenses, and personal information. The Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, released its final report in December 2002. The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (9/11 Commission), the bipartisan commission created by Congressional legislation, made its report public on July 22, 2004. The attacks also had significant economic repercussions, pushing the United States deeper into a recession. U.S. stocks lost $1.2 trillion in value in a week, after the stock market was reopened six days after the attack. Recovery operations took months to complete, and the WTC fire was extinguished after burning for three months. The September attack led to the “War on Terror,” with the United States increasing it military operations, putting pressure on terrorist groups, threatening governments sheltering the militants, and waging war in Afghanistan and afterward in Iraq. Operation Enduring Freedom, which lasted for two months, began on October 7, 2001, against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Although a cooperative
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government was installed in Afghanistan, bin Laden was not captured. But initial support for the War on Terror waged by the United States began to drop significantly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. See also Iraq War; terrorism. Further reading: Bernstein, Richard, and the staff of the New York Times. Out of the Blue: The Story of September 11. New York: Times Books, 2002; Carlisle, Rodney P., ed. One
Day in History: September 11, 2001. New York: HarperCollins, 2007; Clarke, Richard A. Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror. New York: Free Press, 2004; Graham, Bob, and Jeff Nussbaum. Intelligence Matters. New York: Random House, 2004; Posner, Gerald. Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11. New York: Random House, 2003. Patit Paban Mishra
Y Yahya Khan
(1917–1980) Pakistani president Yahya Khan was the president of Pakistan and chief of army staff from 1969 to 1971, following the resignation of Mohammad Ayub Khan. As soon as he rose to power, Yahya Khan declared martial law to quell the widespread riots caused by discontent in the aftermath of the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965. Yahya Khan also dissolved the National Assembly and terminated the constitution. His two years as president were marked by strong tensions in East Pakistan, leading to the Bangladesh Liberation War and the eventual secession of Bangladesh in 1971. Yahya was born in Chakwal on February 4, 1917, into a family of Persian origins, descended from the military elite. He attended Punjab University and graduated first in his class from the Indian Military Academy. Yahya joined the British army, and during World War II he served in Iraq, Italy, and North Africa. After the partition of India, he became the youngest brigadier general in the Pakistani army, commander in chief of the army in 1966, and when President Ayub Khan resigned, he turned to his faithful aide Yahya Khan to maintain order in the country. Yahya was resolute in his restoration of order in the country. To make this suspension of political and civil liberties more palatable, he also started a large-scale renovation of the country’s civil service personnel. He also announced restrictions on economic monopolies and a more equal distribution of wealth.
Yet Yahya’s reforms and his government were swept away by the conflict that erupted in 1971 between East and West Pakistan. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, leader of the Awami League, launched a campaign for the creation of a federation in which East Pakistan would enjoy great autonomy. The League performed extremely well in the 1970 election, winning 160 out of 162 seats in East Pakistan. However the party did not get a single seat in western constituencies, which overwhelmingly went to Zulfikar Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party. Since neither Bhutto nor Mujibur would support the other as prime minister, Yahya decided to solve the political impasse by sending the army to East Pakistan to crush the Awami League. The acts of brutality committed by the army caused millions to flee to India for Indian intervention, forcing the West Pakistani army to surrender. East Pakistan declared its independence, establishing the state of Bangladesh in 1972. Yahya Khan’s only option was to hand power to Zulfikar Bhutto, who put him under arrest. He spent his later years far from the political scene. Further reading: Jaffrelot, Christopher. A History of Pakistan and Its Origins. London: Anthem Press, 2002; Sisson, Richard, and Leo E. Rose. War and Secession: Pakistan, India and the Creation of Bangladesh. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991; Talbot, Ian. Pakistan: A Modern History. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999. Luca Prono
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Yeltsin, Boris
(1931–2007) Russian president Boris Yeltsin was the first president of Russia following the collapse of the communist Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Yeltsin struggled against the vestiges of the former regime and the chaos following its collapse to introduce a stable, democratic system. Yeltsin was born in the region of Sverdlovsk in 1931. He studied construction at the Ural Polytechnic Institute, graduating in 1955. Yeltsin served in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) from 1961 to 1990. He first became a party administrator in 1969 and continued to develop contacts within the Soviet system. Yeltsin rose to the top of the CPSU during the 1980s through connections with General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, the de facto leader of the country, and other reformers. Gorbachev appointed Yeltsin to the Politburo. Yeltsin portrayed himself as a reformer and people’s champion despite his lavish lifestyle. His initiatives became popular. However, Yeltsin repeatedly shuffled and fired staff members and underwent criticism by hard-line Communists. Soon Gorbachev also began to criticize Yeltsin. In 1987 Gorbachev removed Yeltsin from his highranking party positions. Yeltsin became a harsh critic of Gorbachev and advocated a slow pace of reform, which became a hallmark of his later policies. This was an effort to counter Gorbachev’s favoring of a decentralization of power to create hurried reform. In response, Yeltsin was demoted. He vented in the Congress of People’s Deputies, a parliamentary body established by Gorbachev. Yeltsin’s detractors attempted to undermine his integrity, accusing him of being heavily intoxicated in public. Growing dissatisfaction with the Soviet system made men who opposed it, such as Yeltsin, popular. In 1989 Yeltsin ascended to the Congress of People’s Deputies as delegate from the Moscow district and gained a seat on the Supreme Soviet. In 1990 Yeltsin became chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR). In June 1990 the Congress of People’s Deputies of the RSFSR adopted a declaration of sovereignty. Soon after, Yeltsin resigned from the CPSU. During the 1991 democratic presidential elections, Yeltsin won 57 percent of the vote. In August 1991 hard-line Communists launched a coup against Gorbachev, who was held in the Crimea. Yeltsin returned to his presidential office in Moscow, which was surrounded by troops, to deal with the coup. From a tank turret, Yeltsin made a rousing speech that rallied the troops to defect in the face of mass popular demonstrations. The leaders of the coup were dispersed; Yeltsin emerged a national hero.
Gorbachev returned to power with diminished authority. Throughout 1991 the Russian government continued to take over the Soviet Union government. In November, Yeltsin banned the CPSU in the RSFSR. In December, Yeltsin met with the presidents of Ukraine and Belarus to discuss the Soviet Union’s dissolution and its replacement with a voluntary Commonwealth of Independent States. On December 24 the Russian federation took the Soviet Union’s place in the United Nations. The next day, Gorbachev declared that the Soviet Union would cease to exist. Despite the Soviet system’s collapse, its vestiges remained. The Supreme Soviet contained many opposed to Yeltsin’s policies, and local elites collaborated with criminal organizations. Yeltsin bypassed the Supreme Soviet and deliberated policy with his own inner circle. Throughout 1992 Yeltsin attempted to implement economic reforms by decree and declined to hold new elections. In January, Yeltsin removed state control over the prices of most goods, thereby reintroducing a capitalist system and stabilizing currency. The administrative elite of the Soviet era retained control of factories, shops, offices, and farms. Consequently they retarded implementation of Yeltsin’s reforms. Lobbyist groups pressured Yeltsin, who granted a concession continuing governmental subsidies and guarantees that the denationalization of companies would not hinder directors’ and workers’ immediate interests. To appease his detractors, Yeltsin appointed their candidates to some key positions. In the face of skyrocketing inflation Yeltsin fired his premier and replaced him with Viktor Chernomyrdin, who introduced limits on profit rates for several goods. Popular disenchantment with Yeltsin increased, and the country descended into crisis. Many farmers went unpaid for deliveries to state purchasing agents, and industrial production declined. Crime continued to grow. Several Russian republics rebelled. Yeltsin reasserted central authority, enacting a no-tolerance policy toward separatist movements to maintain the Russian state’s integrity during the implementation of reforms. Yeltsin maneuvered around cabinet members appointed to appease the opposition. He had inherited a constitution enabling the Congress of People’s Deputies to intervene in any organ’s jurisdiction. Former Communist elites in positions of power were concerned with securing their dominance and engaged in a power struggle with Yeltsin. In April 1993 Congress unsuccessfully attempted Yeltsin’s impeachment. In response, Yeltsin held a national referendum concerning popular trust in his socioeconomic policies. The results encouraged Yeltsin, who dissolved the Russian parliament in September. Some of Yeltsin’s detractors barricaded
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themselves in the parliament building; Yeltsin ordered the seizure of the building and their forced removal and arrest. Yeltsin briefly declared a state of emergency. In December new elections were held under limited censorship, and Yeltsin initiated a new constitution increasing presidential authority. Yeltsin reappointed his favored cabinet and quickly implemented reforms. He continued to position his supporters as provincial governors. Russia’s inability to establish a stable multiparty system gave Yeltsin freedom to maneuver. In late 1993 remaining price controls were lifted, and privatization continued. By 1994, however, Yeltsin realized that economic reform was happening too fast, and conditions were improving unevenly throughout the country. Yeltsin’s politics verged on opportunism. Following the nationalists’ success in the 1993 elections, Yeltsin pursued nationalist policies. Following the Communists’ success in 1995, Yeltsin adopted Communist policies. In December 1994 Yeltsin ordered Russian troops into the breakaway republic of Ichkeria. His military campaigns were unsuccessful and unpopular, damaging his political reputation and his image as protector of Russia’s integrity. In 1995 Yeltsin suffered a heart attack. In 1996 he narrowly won the presidency in the face of a Communist resurgence resulting from disillusionment with democracy. Yeltsin became increasingly unstable, and his alcohol consumption mounted. He resumed his economic reforms and reduced the budget deficit. However, Yeltsin did little to curb the corrupt practices carried out by his administration. That same year Yeltsin announced Russia’s default on its debts; financial markets panicked; and Russia’s currency collapsed. In 1999 Yeltsin again fired his entire cabinet. His approval rating plummeting, Yeltsin resigned as president in favor of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. See also Soviet Union, dissolution of the. Further reading: Aron, Leon. Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2000; Huskey, Eugene. Presidential Power in Russia. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1999; Yeltsin, Boris. Midnight Diaries. Translated by Catherine Fitzpatrick. New York: PublicAffairs, 2000. Eric Martone
Yemen The Arab Republic of Yemen is located on the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula, sharing borders with Saudi Arabia and Oman. Three-quarters of its popula-
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tion in 2004 lived in rural areas, and its topography ranges from coastal plains to highlands to desert. The British occupation and colonization of southern Yemen (Aden) continued until the late 1950s, when the United Kingdom promised to grant independence to the six states under its control in the south. Two southern Yemeni groups, the Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen (FLOSY) and the National Liberation Front (NLF), fought the plans as well as each other, forcing the British to declare in 1967 that they would hand over power to any group that could set up a government. In November 1967 the last British troops were withdrawn, and the NLF formed a government with Aden as its capital. The federation was officially called the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY). The name reflected the Marxist leanings of the government. Other communist countries, including the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba, provided the impoverished nation with economic aid and assistance. In 1962 the ruling religious leader (imam) in northern Yemen, Imam Ahmad, was overthrown by military officers with the support of Egypt. Fighting ensued between the royalists, supported by Saudi Arabia, and the republicans, supported by Egypt. Following their defeat in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the Egyptians were forced to withdraw their troops. The republicans forged a peace with the remaining royalist tribes and obtained backing from the Saudis. The fighting ended in 1970, and a government was formed of both royalists and republicans as the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR), known as North Yemen or Yemen, with Sanaa as the capital. The republicans eventually took over the reins of government, exiling the imam’s son to Britain. In 1972 the two Yemeni governments fought over their common border. The dispute was mediated by the Arab League and resulted in the surprising Cairo Treaty, which anticipated the unification of the two sides within 12 months. The merger was delayed, and the two sides moved further right and left. The late 1970s was a period of assassination of leaders, upheaval, and armed clashes between the two sides. During the 1980s a trend emerged: The two Yemens would fight, they would sign an agreement to unify the country, and the proposed merger would fail. In addition, in the mid-1980s oil was discovered in the Rub Al-Khali, the desert that straddled the two Yemens. In May 1988 the two Yemens agreed on a neutral zone so that each could use the oil in cooperation with the other. The resolution of this issue and the boost to their economies helped to pave the way for a concrete 14month plan for unification. Declining assistance from
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the crumbling Soviet bloc also encouraged the south to take reunification plans more seriously. In 1990 the border was demilitarized, and currencies were made valid in both Yemens. On May 22, 1990, the two Yemens were united as the Republic of Yemen, with the political capital in Sanaa and the economic capital in Aden. A referendum ratified the unification, and generally fair and open elections were held in April 1993. Despite these political developments, the unification was seen by some Yemenis as too favorable to the north. During the 1990–91 Gulf crisis, Yemen declared its support for an Arab solution to the invasion of Kuwait, demanding the Iraqis leave Kuwait and the U.S. troops withdraw from the region. In retaliation, Saudi Arabia expelled tens of thousands of Yemeni workers. Income plummeted as unemployment rose. In early 1994 violence spread and a new civil war broke out. With no outside support, the south was soon overrun. After the 1994 war, Yemeni unity was reinforced, and all national parties now support national unity. In 1997 a second fair and calm parliamentary election was held, and President Ali Abdullah Saleh was elected to a seven-year term. With wide executive powers he appointed a vice president, cabinet members, a prime minister, and the 111 members of the Shura Council. However, the regime is threatened by mounting pressure from Islamist groups and local leaders. See also Gulf War, First (1991). Further reading: Bidwell, Robin. The Two Yemens. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1983; Dresch, Paul. A History of Modern Yemen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Randa Kayyali
Yoshida Shigeru
belief that the United States would provide the necessary security appealed to the United States as well as many of Japan’s conservatives. Yoshida was born in Tokyo on September 22, 1878, and educated at the Tokyo Imperial University. Like many of the Japanese military and diplomatic leaders of the early 20th century, he joined the Japanese diplomatic corps. In 1938 Yoshida retired while posted in London. He spent a brief time in prison after World War II for his participation in the Japanese government. He emerged as a key postwar leader. On May 22, 1946, Yoshida became the prime minister of Japan. Allied occupation forces held him in high regard for his pro-United States and pro-British stances as well as his familiarity with Western cultures. On May 24, 1947, Tetsu Katayama replaced Yoshida as prime minister, but he regained the position on October 15, 1948, and would continue to serve in the position until 1954. Yoshida’s policies for Japan concentrated on the economic growth required to rebuild the war-torn infrastructure. His policies were quite popular, and he was reelected for three consecutive terms—1949, 1952, and 1953. Yoshida’s most complicated role was bridging the gap from World War II Japan to Japan under occupation to the modern and contemporary economic power. Yoshida brought stability to Japan but also, in the direction he planned for Japan, offered an opportunity for regional peace and economic prosperity. Yoshida died on October 20, 1967. The decade during which he led Japan is called the Yoshida Years. Further reading: Dower, J. W. Empire and Aftermath: Yoshida Shigeru and the Japanese Experience, 1878–1954. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1988; Yoshida Shigeru. Yoshida Shigeru: Last Meigi Man. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2007.
(1878–1967) Japanese diplomat and politician Matthew H. Wahlert
Yoshida Shigeru was both a diplomat and a politician; he served as prime minister of Japan from 1946 to 1947 and from 1948 to 1954. Yoshida led Japan through much of the u.s. occupation of Japan. His leadership ultimately allowed Japan to emerge from the economic, psychological, and physical damage of World War II. His policies led Japan to rapid economic recovery, and he was willing to give up independence in foreign affairs in exchange for military protection from the United States. As a result, Yoshida outlined much of the policy for Japan during the cold war era. His
Yugoslavia, breakup and war in The wars that attended the breakup of Yugoslavia during the 1990s tend to be explained by indicating some historical predisposition of Balkan nationalities toward violence against one another. Although the legacy of the past did play a role in the conflict, it did not determine the bloodshed. In this respect there is no single reason for the dissolution of the Socialist Federated Republic
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U.S. Marines set up a roadblock to check for weapons near the village of Koretin, Kosovo. Units were deployed as an enabling force for KFOR, the NATO-led peacekeeping mission in the Balkan region.
of Yugoslavia. Instead, there is a complex array of economic, cultural, and systemic factors. Many of these factors can be traced to the federal design imposed on the state by Marshal Tito (Josip Broz), which began to unravel soon after his death. The April 1981 Albanian riots in Kosovo marked a turning point in the history of the Yugoslav state, which saw an escalation in interethnic tensions during the 1980s. These were underpinned by regional economic disparities. Gradually, economic nationalism impacted political developments. The ethnically based structure of the federation ensured that the political elites of individual republics relied on the support of their respective republics. Political programs, therefore, were increasingly influenced by nationalist agendas. Slobodan MiloŠeviC´ These developments would not have sufficed to take Yugoslavia down the path of intercommunal violence
had it not been for the agency of individual republican leaders. Most commentators agree that it was the rise to power in Serbia of Slobodan Miloševic´ that led to war. His manipulation of Serb nationalist sentiments allowed him to become president of Serbia in 1989. Under Miloševic´’s leadership the Serbian parliament amended the constitution of the republic in March 1989. The provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina lost their autonomy. In December 1990 Miloševic´ ordered the National Bank of Yugoslavia to allocate unauthorized credits to Serbian-owned enterprises, which both triggered hyperinflation and stiffened the resolve of other republics to secede from Yugoslavia. Miloševic´’s chauvinistic rhetoric and policies pushed the country into war. From April to December 1990 all republics held multiparty elections. The overall success of nationalist formations at the ballot box precipitated the impasse that Yugoslavia reached in 1991. In October 1990 Slovenia and Croatia tabled a formal proposal for the
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transformation of Yugoslavia into a loose confederation. Miloševic´ rejected it. The crisis came in spring 1991 when Serbia announced that it was going to block the rotation of the federal presidency. In May 1991 the Serb representative refused to step down, which forced Slovenia and Croatia to declare independence on June 25, 1991, starting a series of wars. The shortest of those conflicts was the so-called 10day war in Slovenia. It started on June 27, 1991, when units of the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) crossed into Slovenia from Croatia, and JNA units around Ljubljana moved in to occupy the airport. Yet what the authorities in Belgrade did not anticipate was the resolve of the fledgling Slovenian army and Slovenian citizens. By deploying effectively, Slovenian detachments engaged in attacks and ambushes of JNA convoys, besieged JNA barracks, and blocked roads. On July 5 the two sides agreed to a cease-fire, and on July 7, 1991, under the auspices of the European Community, the heads of Yugoslavia’s republics signed the Brioni Agreement, which allowed for Slovenia’s independence. The Brioni Agreement, however, did not address the situation in Croatia. In February 1991 there were skirmishes between Croatian police and Serb militias. In April 1991 the self-proclaimed Serbian Autonomous Region of Krajina declared its secession from Croatia. By June, fighting in this area had already begun. JNA forces retreating from Slovenia lent their support to Serb militias, and in July 1991 a full-fledged war began in Croatia. The JNA attack targeted towns across Croatia. The city of Vukovar in particular became a symbol of the barbarity of the war. Completely surrounded by Serb forces in August, it was under siege for nearly 90 days, by the end of which the entire town was leveled. “ethnic cleansing” The war in Croatia witnessed the first instances of “ethnic cleansing”—a policy for “clearing” a particular territory of rival ethnic groups by either killing or expelling them. In October 1991, JNA forces began bombing the old city of Dubrovnik on the Dalmatian coast. This marked a turning point in the wars of Yugoslav dissolution as it urged international actors to get involved in stopping the violence. In late November all sides to the conflict agreed to a cease-fire, which was brokered by the United Nations (UN). The truce allowed for the establishment of a United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR). This ended the first phase of the war in Croatia. The cease-fire held from 1992 to 1994. In May 1995 the Croatian army took the offensive again, starting the second phase of
the war, and retook most of the Serb-controlled areas in western Slavonia and in the region of Krajina. This triggered an exodus of almost all the Serbs who lived in the country. The war in Croatia ended in December 1995. In many respects the fighting in Croatia marked the next stage in the dissolution of Yugoslavia—the attempt to carve ethnically homogeneous states. On December 19, 1991, the Serbian-controlled western Slavonia and the region of Krajina declared themselves the Republic of Serbian Krajina, and on December 26, 1991, the government in Belgrade declared the establishment of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, consisting of Serbia, Montenegro, and Serbian Krajina. This formation attested to Miloševic’s ´ strategy of carving out a “Greater Serbia” under the guise of a smaller Yugoslavia. This approach was tragically confirmed during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The republic was one of the most ethnically heterogeneous in former Yugoslavia. In 1990 the JNA had already begun transferring weapons to Serb militias in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In August 1991 Miloševic´ met with the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžic´ to discuss a strategy for annexing portions of the republic to Serbia. In September the JNA began establishing, securing, and arming Serbian areas in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which in January 1992 proclaimed themselves the Republika Srpska (Serbian Republic). At the same time, the Croatian president Franjo Tudjman was also plotting to annex the Croat-dominated areas of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Despite the ongoing fighting between Serbia and Croatia, Miloševic´ and Tudjman met secretly in September 1991 to discuss the division of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina began in April 1992. The initial stages saw Serbian forces confronting Bosniaks and Herzegovinian Croats. The Serb forces unleashed a campaign of ethnic cleansing. In response to the violence, the United Nations designated as “safe areas” the cities of Sarajevo, Bihac´, Gorazde, Srebrenica, Tuzla, and Zepa; dispatched UNPROFOR troops; and declared Bosnia-Herzegovina a no-fly zone. The international community presented a peace plan in January 1993 that proposed the division of the country between the Serbs, the Croats, and the Bosniaks. This proposal was rejected. Fighting continued until March 1994, when the Bosniaks and Croats formed a BosniakCroat Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Another front line was opened between the Bosniak forces themselves. The confrontation started in 1993 and went on until 1995. The intensity of the fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and in particular the massacre of 7,000 Bosniak men and boys as a result of
the capture of the “safe area” of Srebrenica by Bosnian Serb forces, urged the international community to act. During November 1995 all sides met in Dayton and negotiated a peace agreement, which ended the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In his first act as president of Serbia in 1989, Miloševic´ had revoked the autonomy of Kosovo. This exacerbated the tensions between the Kosovo Albanians (Kosovars) and the Serbs in the province. Although the Kosovars organized a peaceful resistance, some of them formed the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in 1996. The KLA began to carry out sporadic attacks on Serbian police in the province. In 1998 the tensions started to escalate, and both the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) tried to mediate in the conflict. It was the January 1999 massacre of Albanians in the village of Racak by Serb forces that urged the international community to put more pressure on the two sides. During February and March 1999 the international community organized a conference at Rambouillet (in France). Its failure and the continued violence in Kosovo forced NATO to initiate a bombing campaign of Yugoslavia on
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March 24, 1999. NATO’s campaign, which lasted for 78 days, was its first-ever peace-enforcing mission without a UN mandate. After the war in Kosovo, the only republics to remain in Yugoslavia were Serbia and Montenegro. The latter became increasingly vocal about its desire for independence, and in February 2003 the European Union brokered an agreement for the creation of a Union of Serbia and Montenegro. In June 2006 both Montenegro and Serbia declared their independence as two separate nations. This act formally ended the existence of Yugoslavia. See also Balkans (1991–present); Warsaw Pact. Further reading: Ramet, Sabrina. Thinking About Yugoslavia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005; Rogel, Carole. The Breakup of Yugoslavia. London: Greenwood Press, 2004; Sell, Louis. Slobodan Miloševi c´ and the Destruction of Yugoslavia. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002. Emilian Kavalski
Z Zapatistas In the heavily Mayan Indian state of Chiapas in southeastern Mexico, on New Year’s Day, 1994, a group of rebels carrying automatic rifles, axes, and sledgehammers, wearing black ski masks, and calling themselves the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) proclaimed themselves in rebellion against the Mexican government. The uprising was timed to coincide with the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Mexico, the United States, and Canada. The Mexican government responded by sending some 25,000 soldiers into Chiapas, armed with automatic weapons, tanks, and helicopters. On January 12 the government declared a cease-fire, saying it would respond with force only if attacked. By this time around 150 people had been reported killed, most by government security forces. Talks between the EZLN and government negotiators began on February 20. The Zapatista spokesperson, who called himself Sub-Commander Marcos, soon became an international celebrity. In what has been called the world’s first postmodern rebellion—waged against not only a national government but an international trade agreement, its principal weapons not guns but words, grassroots organizing, and the Internet, and launched not with the goal of military victory but of gaining indigenous rights and national and international solidarity—the Zapatista movement continued into the 21st century, posing a thorny challenge to the Mexican state and local powerholders. In 2007 the rebellion still simmered, centered
in dozens of Zapatista “autonomous municipalities” in the heart of the Chiapas Lacondón rain forest, central highlands, and northern zones. Home to some of the oldest civilizations on Earth, Mexico’s Maya zones have seen a long series of protest movements against local, regional, national, and imperial authorities that stretch back to the initial Spanish invasion in 1522 and continued with the Tzeltal Revolt of 1712, the Jacinto Canek Revolt of 1761, the Caste War of Yucatán from 1848 and its aftermath, and subsequent revolts and resistance movements. After the Mexican Revolution (1910–20) and the establishment of a “one party democracy” under the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) in 1929, Chiapas remained one of the poorest and most marginalized states in the Mexican States United (Estados Unidos Mexicanos). In 1994 its 3.5 million people, spread over some 76,000 square kilometers, included large concentrations of Maya Indians, some two-thirds living in rural areas and divided into numerous ethno-linguistic groups, including Tzeltales, Tzotziles, Choles, Zoques, and Tojolabales. At least half of the indigenous people did not have access to potable water and were illiterate; two-thirds did not have sewage systems; and 90 percent had little or no income. In 1992 President Carlos Salinas and the PRI-dominated houses of Congrttess approved farreaching changes to Article 27 of the 1917 Constitution, effectively privatizing the ejidos (collective village lands) that had been a cornerstone of Mexico’s postrevolutionary agrarian reform laws. The terms of NAFTA further accelerated decades-long trends toward privatization 473
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and the opening of the Mexican economy to transnational corporations and unfettered trade. The rebels named their army after Emiliano Zapata, a village leader from the state of Morelos and one of the leading figures in the Mexican Revolution, whose honesty, rectitude, and uncompromising demands for “land and liberty” made him a heroic figure among the country’s poor and Indian population. The Zapatista spokesperson, Sub-Commander Marcos, remains an enigmatic figure. Never photographed without his black ski mask, he is thought to be Rafael Sebastián Guillén Vicente, a Jesuit-educated former professor of philosophy at the Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico City who began working and organizing among the Maya of Chiapas in the mid-1980s. His name is presumed to be an acronym for the municipalities first taken over by the rebel army (Las Margaritas, Amatenango del Valle, La Realidad, Comitán, Ocosingo, and San Cristóbal de Las Casas). He is called the group’s “sub-commander” because the EZLN is based on grassroots participatory democracy, and he is therefore considered not the group’s leader but a subordinate to the people in whose name he speaks. Peace talks between representatives of the EZLN and the national government began at San Andrés Larrainzar in April 1995. On February 17, 1996, the parties agreed to the terms of the Accords on Indigenous Rights and Culture, known as the San Andrés Accords. The Accords called for revision of Article Four of the 1917 Constitution to require the Mexican state to “recognize the right of Indian peoples to freely determine their own forms of social, economic, political, and cultural organization.” In essence, the accords would have permitted an autonomous parallel state and political structure within Mexico, including an independent judicial system based on indigenous practices. Meanwhile, the military buildup by the Mexican army and security forces in Chiapas intensified as the government waged a low-intensity war against EZLN forces throughout the region. Local paramilitaries, growing out of the “white guards” (guardias blancas) organized by the region’s cattle and landowning oligarchy and active since the early 1980s, also stepped up their attacks against EZLN activists and supporters. New anti-EZLN paramilitaries formed, including the Indigenous Revolutionary Anti-Zapatista Movement (MIRA) and the Red Mask. Attacks, assaults, and human rights abuses against EZLN supporters mounted. On December 22, 1997, the Red Mask massacred 45 people at Acteal, including 21 women and 15 children.
In this context of growing militarization and violence, in August 1996 the EZLN sponsored an International Conference for Humanity Against Neoliberalism (called by Marcos the “Intergalactic Encuentro”), attended by intellectuals, activists, and celebrities from around the world. In January 1997 President Ernesto Zedillo proposed a watered-down version of the San Andrés Accords that eliminated the provisions recognizing indigenous rights. The EZLN rejected the revisions, and henceforth the accords remained a dead letter. propaganda offensive The EZLN’s propaganda offensive continued in marches, demonstrations, solidarity agreements with various sectors of civil society, and a flurry of communiqués and declarations from Sub-Commander Marcos. In March 2001 Zapatista commanders headed a caravan to Mexico City, where they rallied with supporters to demand legislation implementing the original San Andrés accords. Instead, the government passed a law denounced by indigenous rights groups. The Zapatistas responded with a four-year period of “strategic silence,” which they broke in June 2005 with their “Sixth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle,” inaugurating a series of grassroots meetings and a national tour, the “Other Campaign,” to form a coalition of left groups. Typical of the EZLN’s approach to waging war was the assault by the “Zapatista Air Force” against a Mexican military installation in January 2000, in which rebels launched hundreds of paper airplanes into the camp, each bearing handwritten messages such as: “Soldiers, we know that poverty has made you sell your lives and souls. I also am poor, as are millions. But you are worse off, for defending our exploiter Zedillo and his group of moneybags.” Part of a broader resurgence of indigenous political organizing in Mexico, Central America, and the Andes, in 2007 the EZLN controlled over 30 autonomous municipalities, while the struggle in Chiapas and beyond showed no signs of abating. Further reading: Harvey, Neil. The Chiapas Rebellion: The Struggle for Land and Democracy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998; Weinberg, Bill. Homage to Chiapas: The New Indigenous Struggles in Mexico. London: Verso, 2000; Womack, John, Jr. Rebellion in Chiapas: An Historical Reader. New York: New Press, 1999. Michael J. Schroeder
Zhou Enlai (Chou En-lai)
(1898–1976) Chinese communist leader Zhou Enlai came from a gentry family, studied in Tianjin (Tientsin), and participated in the student movement before sailing for France in 1920. He was a founding member of the Chinese Communist Youth Corps in France, in charge of political indoctrination. He also joined the Nationalist Party (or Kuomintang, KMT) in 1923, his dual-party membership made possible by the united front that KMT leader Sun Yat-sen negotiated with the Soviet Union. After returning to China in 1924, he became the deputy director of the political department of the Whampoa Military Academy, which Chiang Kaishek headed, in which position he recruited young cadets for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to infiltrate the KMT officer corps. Zhou was able to escape Chiang’s dragnet when the latter purged communists from the KMT in 1927, visited the Soviet Union, and finally surfaced in Ruijin (Juichin), the CCP headquarters in Jiangxi (Kiangsi) Province, in 1931. In Ruijin the Zhou–Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) collaboration began, and lasted until Zhou’s death in 1976. Zhou participated in the Long March (1934–35) and was a negotiator for the CCP in the formation of the Second United Front with the KMT, which came about as a result of Japan’s all-out war against China in 1937. He represented the CCP in China’s wartime capital Chongqing (Chungking) as a member of the People’s Political Council and successfully undermined the KMT with his personal charisma and the reasonable image he projected of the CCP. Zhou represented the CCP in post–World War II talks with the KMT, mediated by U.S. special ambassador George Marshall. Zhou employed the “now talk; now fight” strategy, which contributed to the United States washing its hands of China and the CCP victory over the KMT in 1949. When the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was established in 1949, Zhou became both premier and foreign minister. He personally handled China’s important international negotiations even after he ceded the foreign minister post to Chen Yi in 1958. Besides taking numerous negotiating trips to the Soviet Union, he also represented China at the Geneva Conference, which ended the First Indochina War in 1954, and at the Bandung Conference of 29 AfroAsian states in 1955, where China was accepted as the leader of the “anti-imperialist” bloc of nations. He mediated between the Soviet Union, Hungary, and Poland in 1957 but failed to find a peaceful solution with India in the Sino-Indian boundary dispute. He was the lone leader of moderation during the violence and
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chaos of the Cultural Revolution after 1966 and played a key role in bringing about the rapprochement between China and the United States that culminated in President Richard Nixon’s visit to China in 1972. In his last years Zhou promoted pragmatist Deng Xiaoping (Teng Hisao-p’ing) to be his vice premier. Deng consolidated power and began economic reforms after Mao’s death. Among Mao’s senior associates, Zhou alone escaped being purged in a long career. See also Gang of Four and Jiang Qing; Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China (1966–1976). Further reading: Han, Suyin. Eldest Son, Zhou Enlai and the Making of Modern China, 1898–1976. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994; Hsu Kai-yu. Chou En-lai: China’s Gray Eminence. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968; Lee, Chae-lin. Zhou Enlai: The Early Years. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994. Jiu-Hwa Lo Upshur
Zia, Khaleda
(1945– ) Bangladeshi prime minister Khaleda Zia became the prime minister of Bangladesh for the third time in October 2001 for a five-year term. She was born on August 15, 1945, in Jalpaiguri (now in Bengal, India), the third of her parents’ five children. Zia had her early school education at Dinajpur Government Girl School and her post-secondary education at Surendranath College. She was married to Ziaur Rahman, then a captain in the Pakistan army, in August 1960. Ziaur Rahman later broke away from the Pakistan army to join the pro-independence forces of Bangladesh on March 25, 1971. After her husband’s assassination in 1981, his party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), chose Zia as the president on March 10, 1984. In the 1991 election the BNP received a massive mandate, securing an absolute majority, and Zia began her tenure as Bangladesh’s first female prime minister (1991–96). During her first tenure she brought about major educational changes by mandating free and compulsory education for girls. She introduced incentives such as stipends for young female students and revitalized the economy by taking poverty alleviation measures. Zia became prime minister for the second consecutive term when the BNP scored a landslide victory in the February 1996 general election. During her second
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term she increased the age limit for entry into government service to 30 years of age. She also made efforts to safeguard the traditional and cultural identity of underdeveloped hill and tribal people of Bangladesh by providing them with employment opportunities, education, and other facilities to improve their standard of living. She was elected prime minister for the third time in October 2001, when she led a four-party alliance to win a two-thirds majority in the parliamentary poll, but was deposed in 2007. In foreign affairs she promoted regional cooperation with Bangladesh’s South Asian neighbors, including India. She also actively supported United Nations peacekeeping efforts. On the environment she took measures for planned usage of water resources, prevention of erosion of riverbanks, and maintaining ecological balance through conservation of forests. In local government and people’s empowerment she decentralized the power at the village, union, district, and subdistrict levels through a four-tier, autonomous, and democratic local self-governance. Further reading: Baxter, Craig. Bangladesh: From a Nation to a State. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997; Zafarullah, Habib. The Zia Episode in Bangladesh Politics. Dhaka: University Press of Bangladesh, 1997. Mohammed Badrul Alam
Zia-ul-Haq, Mohammad (1924–1988) Pakistani president
Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq was president of Pakistan for more than a decade from 1977, when he overthrew the government of Zulfikar Bhutto, to 1988, the year of his death in a plane crash. As the president of Pakistan, in 1978, Zia established a totalitarian and dictatorial regime based on the enforcement of martial law, the suppression of political opponents, and the dissolution of all political parties. When he decided to partially restore democracy, he made key amendments to the constitution ensuring the president the right to overrule parliamentary decisions in the national interest. As president he tried to maintain close links to Islam and to revive the country’s declining economy, while his foreign policy was marked by the support of the mujahideens in the Soviet-Afghan War.
Zia was born in Jalandhar on August 12, 1924, the son of a teacher in the British army. He first attended the Government High School in Simla, and then went on to earn his B.A. at St. Stephen College, Delhi. He was commissioned in the British army when he was 19 years old. At the time of the Indian partition he, like most Muslims, chose to continue his career in the Pakistani army. In the early 1960s Zia trained in the United States, and he was later sent to Jordan to help the formation of the country’s army. In April 1976 Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto surprisingly appointed Zia chief of army staff instead of more senior generals. Bhutto probably underestimated Zia’s political abilities, ambitions, and his following in the army. Yet when the opposition coalition of the Pakistan National Alliance charged Bhutto with rigging the electoral results, Zia took advantage of the situation, leading a military coup against Bhutto and decreeing martial law to reestablish order. Zia consolidated his grip on the government and created the Disqualification Tribunal, which forced many politicians and members of Parliament to retire from public life. He also decided to dissolve parliament and replace it with the Majlis-i-Shoora, an assembly of 284 member from the different classes of Pakistani society who were, however, selected by the president himself. Former prime minister Bhutto was hanged in 1979 after a long and controversial trial. When Zia finally decided to call elections in the mid-1980s, he first secured his right to continue to be president with a referendum that closely linked his presidency with the Islamization of Pakistan. He overwhelmingly won the referendum and appointed Muhammad Khan Junejo as the prime minister. Tensions between the president and the prime minister soon surfaced, and he removed Junejo from office in 1988. The president soon found himself in a difficult position due to the return to Pakistan of Bhutto’s daughter, Benazir Bhutto, who had started to gather the forces of opposition. Zia had not been able to decide how to solve his intricate political situation before he died in a plane crash near Bhawalpur on August 17, 1988. Further reading: Jaffrelot, Christopher. A History of Pakistan and Its Origins. London: Anthem Press, 2002; Talbot, Ian. Pakistan: A Modern History. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999. Luca Prono
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El-Nawawy, Mohammed, and Adel Iskandar. AlJazeera: How the Free Arab News Network Scooped the World and Changed the Middle East. Cambridge, MA: Westview Press, 2002. Esposito, John, ed. The Iranian Revolution: Its Global Impact. Miami: Florida International University Press, 1990. Evans, Martin. Afghanistan: A Short History of Its People and Politics. New York: Harper Publishers, 2002. Fairbank, John K., and Albert Feuerwerker, eds. Cambridge History of China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978–2002. French, Paul. North Korea: The Paranoid Peninsula—A Modern History. London: Zed Books, 2005. Gaddis, John Lewis. The Cold War: A New History. New York: Penguin Press, 2005. Gelvin, James L. The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Gott, Richard. Cuba: A New History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004. Gott, Richard. Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution. London: Verso, 2005. Gulati, M. N. Pakistan’s Downfall in Kashmir—The Three Indo-Pak Wars. New Delhi: Manas, 2004. Hahn, Gordon M. Russia’s Revolution from Above, 1985–2000: Reform, Transition, and Revolution in the Fall of the Soviet Communist Regime. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2002. Halley, Laurence. Ancient Affections: Ethnic Groups and Foreign Policy. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1985. Hanson, Philip. The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Economy: An Economic History of the USSR from 1945. New York: Longman, 2003 Harris, Richard L., ed. Globalization and Development in Latin America. Whitby, Canada: de Sitter Publications, 2005. Herspring, Dale R. Putin’s Russia: Past Imperfect, Future Uncertain. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004. Hiro, Dilip. The Longest War: The Iran-Iraq Military Conflict. New York: Routledge, 1991. Kepel, Gilles. The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004. Keylor, William R. The Twentieth-Century World and Beyond: An International History Since 1900, 5th Edition. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Kinzer, Stephen. Crescent and Star: Turkey, between Two Worlds. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001. Klare, Michael T. Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict. New York: Henry Holt, 2001 Lewis, Paul H. Authoritarian Regimes in Latin America: Dictators, Despots, and Tyrants. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2006. Lippman, Thomas W. Inside the Mirage: America’s Fragile Partnership with Saudi Arabia. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2004. MacCoun, Robert, Peter Reuter, and Charles Wolf, Jr. Drug War Heresies: Learning from Other Vices, Times, and Places (RAND Studies in Policy Analysis). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. al-Madfai, Madiha Rashid. Jordan, the United States and the Middle East Peace Process, 1974–1991. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Maslin, Mark. Global Warming: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Mastny, Vojtech. A Cardboard Castle? An Inside History of the Warsaw Pact, 1955–1991. New York: Central European University Press, 2005. McFaul, Michael, and Stoner-Weiss, Kathryn, eds. After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transition. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. McMahon, Robert. Major Problems in the History of the Vietnam War. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003. Myers, Ramon H., ed. Two Societies in Opposition: The Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China After Forty Years. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991. Nathan, Andrew J., and Robert S. Ross. The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress: China’s Search for Security. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997. Nathan, James. Anatomy of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001. Nesadurai, Helen E. S. Globalisation, Domestic Politics, and Regionalism: The Asean Free Trade Area. London: Routledge, 2003. Norgaard, Ole. The Baltic States after Independence. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 1997. O’Brien, Robert, et al. Contesting Global Governance: Multilateral Economic Institutions and Global Social Movements. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. O’Dell, John S., ed., Negotiating Trade: Developing Countries in the WTO and NAFTA. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
OECD. Large-scale Disasters: Lessons Learned. OECD, 2004. Pinder, John. The European Union. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Pridham, Geoffrey, and Tom Gallagher, eds. Experimenting with Democracy: Regime Change in the Balkans. London: Routledge, 2000. Prunier, Gerard. Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005. Rahr, Alexander, and Koji Watanabe. The New Central Asia: In Search of Stability. New York: Trilateral Commission, 2000. Rashid, Ahmed. Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000. Ricks, Thomas. Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. New York: Penguin Press, 2006. Rubin, Barnett R. The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and Collapse in the International System. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995. Rynning, Sten. NATO Renewed: The Power and Purpose of Transatlantic Cooperation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Sandbrook, Richard, ed., Civilizing Globalization: A Survival Guide. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. Sandler, Shmuel. The Arab-Israeli Conflict Transformed: Fifty Years of Interstate and Ethnic Crises. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. Scheuer, Michael. Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America. Washington, DC: Brassey’s, Inc., 2002. Schoultz, Lars. Beneath the United States: A History of U.S. Policy toward Latin America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998. Shaw, Carolyn M. Cooperation, Conflict, and Consensus in the Organization of American States. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Shoemaker, M. Wesley. Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States. 35th Edition. Harpers Ferry, WV: Stryker-Post Publications, 2004. Sinclair, Andrew. An Anatomy of Terror: A History of Terrorism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Sisson, Richard. War and Secession: Pakistan, India, and the Creation of Bangladesh. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Stiglitz, J. Globalization and Its Discontents. New York: W. W. Norton, 2003. Talbott, Strobe, and Nayan Chanda, eds. The Age of Terror: America and the World after September 11. New York: Basic Books, 2002.
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Teufel Dreyer, June. China’s Forty Millions: Minority Nationalities and National Integration in the People’s Republic of China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985. de Waal, Thomas. Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War. New York: New York University Press, 2003. Walraven, Klaas van. Dreams of Power: The Role of the Organization of African Unity in the Politics of Africa. Leiden, Netherlands: Ashgate, 1999. Westad, Odd Arne. The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Wiarda, Howard J., and Harvey F. Kline, eds. A Concise Introduction to Latin American Politics and Development. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2007. Woost, Michael D., and Deborah Winslow. Economy, Culture, and Civil War in Sri Lanka. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004. Yildiz, Kerim. The Kurds in Iraq: The Past, Present and Future. London: Pluto Press, 2004. Young, Thomas-Durell. Australia, New Zealand, and U.S. Security Relations, 1951–1986. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992. Journals Africa Report Asian Survey China Quarterly, The Current History Environment and Urbanization Foreign Affairs International Affairs Journal of American History Journal of Modern African Studies Political Science Quarterly Problems of Post-Communism Review of International Affairs, The Online Resources Association of Southeast Asian Nations — www.aseansec.org Bridging World History — www.learner.org/channel/ courses/worldhistory/ Center for History and New Media: World History Matters — worldhistorymatters.org/ China and Europe: 1500–2000 and Beyond — afe. easia.columbia.edu/chinawh/index.html East-West Center — www.eastwestcenter.org/ Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean — www.eclac.org
480
Resource Guide
European Union — www.europa.eu Institute for Counter-Terrorism — www.ict.org Library of Congress Country Profiles — lcweb2.loc.gov/ frd/cs/profiles National Security Archive — www.gwu.edu Population Reference Bureau — www.prb.org UNESCO World Heritage — whc.unesco.org/ pg.cfm?cid=31 United Nations: Cartographic Section — www.un.org/ Depts/Cartographic/english/htmain.htm
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum — www.ushmm .org The World Bank — www.worldbank.org/ The World Fact Book — www.cia.gov World Images, California State University — http:// worldart.sjsu.edu/ The World Wide Web Virtual Library — vlib.iue.it/history/index.html United Nations Development Program — hdr. undp.org
Index Note: page references in boldface refer to volume numbers and major topics. Article titles and map titles are in boldface. A Abacha, Sani, 314 Abbas, Mahmud, 212, 333 Abboud, Ibrahim, 428 Abdikassim, Salad Hassan, 394 Abdulajanov, Abdumalik, 84 Abdullah II (king of Jordan), 233–234 Abernathy, Ralph, 245 Abiola, Moshood, 314 abortion, 150–151, 366–367 Abubakar, Abdulsalam, 314 Accords on Indigenous Rights and Culture, 374 Acheson, Dean, 382 acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). See AIDS crisis Action Directe, 108 Action for Progress, 11 Act of Free Choice, 124 Adamec, Ladislav, 129 Adams, Gerry, 221 Addis Ababa Agreement, 323, 407 Adenauer, Konrad, 144, 145, 161, 165 Afghanistan, xl, xli, 1–3, 11, 12, 37, 71, 72, 73, 76, 99, 101, 102, 126, 128, 222, 235–236, 322, 375, 395, 412, 418, 419, 440, 462, 463, 475 Aflaq, Michel, 47
Africa, xxxvi, xxxviii, xl, xlii, 6–7, 17–18, 138, 140–141, 344, 381, 425–426 African Americans, xxxvii, 66–67, 73, 93–97, 107, 178, 244–245, 278–280, 285–286, 292, 405 African Economic Community, 5 African Independence, M166 African National Congress (ANC), xxxvii, 3–5, 237, 280, 281, 324, 364 African National Youth League, 364 African Union (AU), 5 Afwerki, Isaias, 141 Agartala Conspiracy Case, 359 Ag˘ca, Mehmet Ali, 230 Agenda for Greater Economic Integration, 44 Agnew, Spiro, 153, 316, 317, 318 Agrarian Reform Law, 67 Agrarian Studies Commission, 20 agriculture, xxxi, 182–183, 261 Aguiyi-Ironsi, Johnson, 64 Ahmad, Hussein Ait, 8 Ahmad, Imam, 467 Ahmad, Jalal Al-e, 216 Ahmadinejad, Mahmud, 214 Ahmed, Abdullah Yusuf, 394 Ahmed, Fakhuruddin Ali, 158 Ahmed, Fayez, 462
Aidit, Dipa Nusantara, 206 AIDS crisis, xxxv, xxxvii, 6–7, 99, 143, 164, 336, 361, 422, 425, 460 Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), 316–317 Air Bridge Denial (ABD), 123 Air Campaign in Kosovo, March 25-June 20, 1999, M192 airline hijackings, 8, 12, 393, 419 Aishwarya, 309 Akayev, Askar, 82, 83 Akihito (emperor of Japan), 7–8 Alaskan Native Claims Settlement Act, 16 Alawite dynasty, 293 Alawites, 41, 47 Albania, 49, 50–51, 456, 457 Albany Movement, 96 Albright, Madeleine, 99 Alder v. Board of Education of New York, 289 Aldrin, Edwin, 399 Alessandri, Jorge, 10 Algeria, xl, 69, 163, 164, 222, 223, 460 Algerian Revolution, 8–9, 149 Algerian War, 29 Alghamdi, Saeed, 462 Algiers Accord, 198, 216 Algiers Treaty, 218
481
482
Index
Ali, Abdurahman Ahmed, 393 Ali, Muhammad, 326 Aliyev, Heydar, 32 Aliyev, Ilham, 32 All Africa Convention (AAC), 3 All-African Peoples’ Conference, 273 Allende, Salvador, 9–10, 317, 339 Alliance, Treaty of, 113 Alliance for Labor Action (ALA), 15 Alliance for Progress, 10, 77 Alliance of the Democratic Left (SLD), 341 Alliance Party, 279 Allied Command Operations (ACO), 322 Allied Control Council, 58, 165 Allied Occupation Authority, 382 All India Congress Committee (AICC), 386 All-Party State League Action Council, 359 Alnami, Ahmed, 462 Alomari, Aabdul, 462 Alshehhi, Marawan, 462 Alsheri, Mohald, 462 Alsheri, Wail, 462 Altamirano, Bayardo, 383 Altan Khan, 115 Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union, 15 Amaterasu (Japanese sun goddess), 7 Ambani, Mukesh, 40 Ambedkar, B. R., 201 Amer, Abd al-Hakim, 438 American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organization (AFL-CIO), 11–13, 388, 405 American-French-Italian Multinational Force (MNF), 264 American Indian Movement (AIM), 13, 323 American Revolutionary War, 41 American Right to Life Committee, 367 Americas Watch, 106, 385 Amhara, 142 Amin, Hifizullah, 235 Amin, Idi, 324, 433, 434 Amir, Yigal, 358 Amity and Cooperation, Treaty of, 44 Ammar, Abu, 29 Amnesty International, 30, 385 Anabaptists, 132 ANC Youth League, 4 Andean Community of Nations (CAN), 320 Andean Group (AG), xxxviii Andrés Pérez, Carlos, 89 Andropov, Yuri, 72, 73, 173, 198, 457 Anglican Church, 260 Anglo-Chinese War, First, 192 Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), 295 Anglo-Irish War, 220 Anglo-Nepalese War, 308 Angola, 111, 291, 344, 365 Republic of, 17–18 Anishinabe Turtle Mountain Reservation, 16
Antall, József, 128 Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL), 306 antiretroviral drugs (ARVs), 6, 7 Antunes, Melo, 344 ANZUS Security Treaty, 14–15, 395 Aoun, Michel, 264 Aouzou Strip, 353 apartheid, 3, 156, 280, 362 appropriate technology, 15–16, 45, 422 Aqaba, Gulf of, 24 al-Aqsa Intifada, 21, 30, 189, 42–43 Aquino, Benigno “Ninoy,” Jr., 283, 338 Aquino, Corazon, 276, 283–284, 339 Arab Afghans, 13 Arab cold war, 305, 438 Arab Deterrent Force, 263 Arab-Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, 16–19 Arab-Israeli War(s) in 1948, 133, 304 in 1956, 19–20, 45 in 1967, 20–22, 29, 134, 210, 211, 233, 305, 332, 384, 438, 467 in 1973, 21, 22–23, 328, 384 in 1982, 23–24 Arab League, 467 Arab Liberation Front, 332 Arab Socialist Party, 47 Arab Socialist Union (ASU), 134 Arafat, Yasir, 17, 18, 24–26, 42, 99, 212, 332, 358 Aramburu, Pedro E., 293 arap Moi, Daniel, 239, 240 Arbenz, Jacobo, 20, 182 architecture and art. See art and architecture Arcushin, Raquel, 30 Arévalo, Juan José, 26 Argentina, 37, 147–148, 257, 259, 292, 338, 420 Madres de Plaza de Mayo, 27–28, 30 urban guerrillas (Montoneros), 71, 292–293 Argentine Liberation Front, 293 Argov, Shlomo, 28 Arif, Abd al Rahman, 219 Arif, Abd al-Salam, 47, 219 Aris, Michael, 46 Aristide, Jean-Bertrand, 28, 125 Armed Forces Movement (MFA), 344, 345 Armenia, 28–30, 253, 397, 398 arms race/atomic weapons, xl, 18, 30–32, 120–122, 203 Armstrong, Neil, 316, 399, 400 Army of National Liberation (EZLN), 262 Arroyo, Jose Miguel, 276 art and architecture, 32–38 Arusha Declaration, 324 Arzu, Álvaro, 183
ASEAN Centre for Combating Transnational Crime (ACTC), 45 ASEAN Chiefs of Police (ASEANAPOL), 45 ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA), 44, 45 ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Transnational Crime (AMMTC), 45 ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), 45 Ashley, Edwina Cynthia, 296 Ashtiyani, Mirza Hedayat, 295 Asia, Central, 81–88 Asian Development Bank (ADB), 38–39, 403 Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), xxxviii, 39–40 Asian Relations Conference, 201 Asia: Wars, Political Unrest, and Territorial Disputes, 1945–Present, M178 Aslonov, Kadriddin, 84 Asociación de Madres de Plaza de Mayo (Association of Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo), 30 ASPIDA, 179 Assad, Bashar, 42 Assad, Basil, 42 Assad, Hafez al, 26, 41–42, 47, 438 Assad, Rifaat, 42 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), 42–43, 44, 45, 278, 389, 408 Assyrian Church, 133 Astles, Bob, 434 Asturias, Miguel Angel, 258 Aswa¯n Dam, xxxii, 19, 23, 37, 42, 134, 305, 422 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal, 429 Atatürk Dam, 19 Ato, Osman Ali, 394 Atomic Energy Act, 34 atomic weapons/arms race, xxxiv, 33–35, 120–122, 203, 287, 367, 369 Atta, Mohammad, 462 Attila II, 114 Attlee, Clement, 307 Augsburg Confession, 132, 133 Aum Shinrikyo, 418 Aung San Suu Kyi, 42, 441 Australia, 18–19, 43, 45, 104, 259, 382 Austria, 127, 169 autogestion, 9 Ávila Camacho, Manuel, 208 Awami League, 43–44, 56, 63, 331, 359, 455, 465 al Awdah, Salman, 13 Aydid, Hussein, 394 Aydid, Mohammad Farrah, 393, 394 Aylwin, Patricio, 340 Ayub Khan, Mohammad, 43, 44, 63, 207, 331, 359, 387, 413, 414, 465 Azerbaijan, 28–29, 253, 397, 398 Aziz, Fahd ibn Abd, al-, 383, 384
Aziz, Faisal bin Abd, al-, 384 Aziz, Khaled ibn Abd, al-, 384 Aziz, Saud ibn Abd, al-, 383, 384 Aznar, José Maria, 403 Azzam, Abdullah, 12 Azzouz, Sheikh Ben, 223 B B-47 Stratojet, 34 B-52 Stratofortress, 34 Ba, Amadou Hampate, xxxix Baader Meinhof Gang, 418 Ba’ath Party, 41, 47–48, 200–201, 219, 238, 254 Babangida, Ibrahim, 314 baby boom, U.S., xxxv, 48, 405 Bachelet, Michelle, xxxvii Badr, Muhammad al-, 134 Bagaza, Jean-Baptiste, 379 Baghdad Pact/CENTO, 1, 48–49, 219, 305 Bahrain, 40 Bai Chongxi (Pai Chung-hsi), 272 Baker, Ella, 405 Baker, James, 22 Baker v. Carr, 178 Bakiev, Kurmanbek, 83 Bakr, Ahmed Hassan al-, 48, 198, 219 Baktiar, Shapour, 220 Balaguer, Joaquín, 68 Balfour Declaration, 104 Balkans, 49–52, 169 Ball, George, 450 Baltic States, 52–54, 370, 396 Ba Maw, 441 Bamina, Joseph, 379 Bamiyan Buddhas, 37 Banda, Hastings, 54–55 Bandaranaike, Chandrika, 404 Bandhu, Banga, 358 Bandung Conference (Asian-African Conference), 55, 201, 305, 475 Bangladesh, xxxvii, 46–47, 64, 158, 201, 331, 358–359, 455, 465, 476 People’s Republic of, 55–56 Bani-Sadr, Abolhassan, 217 Bantu, 4, 17, 118, 281 Bao Dai, 309, 449 Barak, Ehud, 22, 30, 99 Baraka, Amiri, 66 Baraona, Pablo, 90 Baravalle, Mirta, 30 Bardón, Álvaro, 90 Barker, Bernard, 458 Bar Lev Defense Line, 26 Barnett, Ross R., 95, 96 Baruch, Bernard, 99 Baruch Plan, 120 Bashir, Omar, al-, 116 Bashir, Umar Hasan, al-, 429 Barzani, Mustafa, 219
Index Barzani family, 253–254 Basayev, Shamyl, 375 Basic Agreement on Reconciliation, Non-Aggression, and Cooperation of Exchanges, 250 Bataan, Battle of, 283 Batatele, 273 Batista, Fulgencio, 80, 111, 184 Bayar, Celal, 429 Bay of Pigs, 56–57, 101, 109, 112, 238 Bazargan, Mehdi, 217 Beamon, Bob, 326 Beat movement, 57 Beauvoir, Simone de, xxxvi, 149, 151 bebop, 57 Begendjev, Kurbandurdy, 86 Begin, Menachem, 21, 28, 79 Behrangi, Samad, 216 Beijing-Moscow Axis, 92 Beijing, Treaty of, 192 Beknazarov, Azimbek, 83 Belarus, 122, 370, 398 Belgium, 167, 273, 290–292, 379–380 Belgrade Conference of the Heads of State of Non-Aligned Countries, 277 Belhadj, Ali, 223 Belka, Marek, 341 Ben Ali, Zine el Abidine, 69, 223 Ben Arafa, Muhammad, 293 Ben Barka, Mehdi, 293, 294 Ben Bella, Ahmad, 8, 9 Bengali Liberation War, 56 Ben-Gurion, David, 21, 288, 289 Benjedid, Chadli, 9 Ben Yusuf, Muhammad, 293 Berdymukhamedov, Gurbunguly, 86, 87 Berezovsky, Boris, 377 Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, 362 Beria, Lavrenty, 242 Berlin blockade/airlift, 58–60, 164 Berlin Wall, xl, xli, 60, 74, 101, 127, 145, 167, 243, 440 Bermúdez, Enrique, 106 Bernstein, Carl, 317, 458 Beslan school, 377 Betancourt, Rómulo, 60–61, 89 Betjeman, John, 38 Bevin, Ernest, 284 Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), 61, 227 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), 61, 160, 227, 445 Bhopal industrial disaster, 136 Bhumibo Adulyadej (Rama IX), 61–62, 301 Bhutan, 201 Bhutto, Benazir, 62–63, 64, 297, 331, 332, 476 Bhutto, Mir Murtaza, 332 Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali, 47, 48, 62, 63–64, 211, 331, 465, 475, 476 Biafra, 314
483
Biafran War, 5, 64–65 biblical inerrancy, 65 Bidault, Georges, 284 Bikila, Abebe, 326 Biko, Steve, 454 Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, xxxvii, 19 Binaisa, Godfrey, 433 Binalshibh, Ramzi, 14 bin Laden, Osama, 2, 3, 9, 11, 12, 357, 362, 412, 418, 428, 429, 462, 463, 464 Birendra, 308, 309 Birindwa, Faustin, 291 birth control, xxxvi, 134, 140, 151, 366, 446 Bishop, Maurice, 181 Bitar, Salah al-Din, 47 Bizone/Bizonia, 48, 49 Black Arts movement, 66–67 “Black Friday,” 217 Blackmun, Harry, 367 Black Muslim movement, 279 Black Panthers, 67, 97, 163 Black Power movement, 66–67, 97, 405 “Black Saturday,” 134 Black September, 27, 29, 263, 332 Black Tigers, 413 Blackwater USA Corporation, 187 Blake, Peter, 38 Bloc Québécois, 356 Blythe, William Jefferson, III, 98 Boboyev, Tolib, 84 Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, 115 Bogdanovich, Peter, 108 Bogotazo, 80, 103, 157 Bogyoke Aung San, 46 Boland, Edward, 106 Boland Amendment, 214 Bolívar, Simón, 89 Bolivia, 183, 262, 335–336, 379 Bolivian revolution, 67–68 Bolshevik Revolution, 100 Bonn Agreements, 3 Borge, Tomás, 310 Borge Martínez, Tomás, 383 Bork, Robert, 318 Borlaug, Norman F., 180 Borodin, Pavel, 348 Bosch, Juan, 68 Bosnia, 37, 222 Bosnia-Herzegovina, 49, 51, 470 Boumedienne, Houari, 9 Bourguiba, Habib, 68–69, 223 Bracero Program, 69–70, 209, 261 Brand, Adolf, 163 Brandenburg Gate, 127, 168 Brandt, Willy, 167 Braun, Werhner, von, 399 Braverman, Berta, 30
484
Index
Brazil, 41, 252, 260, 388, 422 military dictatorships in, 70–71 Bremer, Paul, 186 Bretton Woods system, 144, 164, 209, 461 Brezhnev, Leonid Ilyich, 27, 71–73, 104, 121, 243, 347, 391, 392, 457 Brezhnev Doctrine, 72, 442 Briend, Andre, xxxi Brioni Agreements, 470 British Commonwealth, 104–105 British East Africa Company, 433 British North America Act, 356 British North Borneo, 277 British Somaliland, 194 British Trade Union Congress, 14 Browder v. Gayle, 292 Brown, Edmund G. “Pat,” 155, 316, 318 Brown, Jerry, 98 Brown, John Clellon, 57 Brown, Oliver, 73 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 73–74, 94, 107, 285, 286 Brucan, Silviu, 130 Brundtland Commission, 136 Brunei, 43, 44 Büchi, Hernán, 90 Budd, Zola, 326 Buddhism, 115–116, 148 Buendorf, Larry, 154 Buhari, Mohammed, 314 Bulgakov, Mikhail, 173 Bulganin, Nikolai, 242 Bulgaria, 49, 100, 102, 129,145 Bullins, Ed, 66 Bunche, Ralph, 20 Burey, Vivian, 286 Burger, Warren, 366 Burma, 46, 123, 305–306, 441 Burroughs, William S., 57 Burundi, 375–376 Bush, George H. W., 13, 16, 74–75, 91, 98, 122, 185, 361, 362 Bush, George W., 75–76, 89, 171, 276, 463 Bush, Jeb, 75 Butelezi, Gatsha, 4 Butterfield, Alexander, 458 Buyoya, Pierre, 379 Byrd, Harry, 238 Byrd Amendment, 364–365 C Cabañas, Lucio, 209 Cabral, Amílcar, 344 Caen, Herb, 57 Caetano, José das Neves, 344 Caimi, Señora De, 30 Cairo Treaty, 467 Caldera, Rafael, 89 Calderón, Felipe, 209 Calles, Plutarco Elías, 208, 290
Calley, William, 452 Calvin, John, 132 Cambodia, 8, 44, 72–75, 191, 204, 205, 317, 340–341, 443, 449, 452 Campaign for the Reelection of the President (CREEP), 317 Camp David, 21, 22, 30 Camp David accords, 27, 79 Campos, Roberto, 70 Canada, 43, 77–79, 104–105, 151, 320– 321, 323–324, 354–355, 404, 428 carbon emissions, xxxiv, 255 Carby, Hazel, 151 Cardenal, José Francisco, 106 Cárdenas, Lázaro, 208, 290 Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act (CBERA), 77 Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Expansion Act (CBI II), 77 Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI), 11, 78 Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act (CBTPA), 77 Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM), 320 Carlos, Palma, 344, 345 Carmichael, Stokely, 66, 97, 405 Carranza, Venustiano, 290 Carrion, Luis, 383 Carson, Rachel, xxxiv Carter, Jimmy, 2, 19, 21, 72, 79–80, 120, 121, 154, 194, 215, 311, 318, 365, 444 Carter, Ruth, 79 Carvalho, Otelo Saraiva de, 344 Casey, William, 214 Cassin, René, 164 Castello Branco, Humberto, 70–71 Caste War of Yucatán, 473 Castillo, Chema, 383 Castillo, Ramón, 338 Castillo Armas, Carlos, 182 Castro, Fidel, xl, 10, 11, 56, 80–81, 101, 109, 110, 111–112, 153, 157, 183, 238, 258, 259, 261, 279, 293, 310, 319, 344, 383, 414 Castro, Raúl, 80, 111 Castro, Sergio de, 90 Catholic Church, 68, 132, 133, 138, 260, 289–290, 312, 446 Catholic Worker Movement, 117 Catt, Carrie Chapman, 139 Cauas, Jorge, 90 Cease-Fire Line (CFL), 48, 202 Ceaus¸escu, Nicolae, 52, 129, 130 Cédras, Raoul, 31 CENTO/Baghdad Pact, 48–49, 219, 305 Central America, xxxi, xxxvi Central American-Dominican RepublicUnited States Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR), 320
Central Asia, 81–89 Central European Bank, 144 Central Intelligence Agency, Korean (KCIA), 249, 334 Central Intelligence Agency, U.S. (CIA), 56, 74, 101, 106, 157, 182, 214, 312, 318, 319, 337 Central Worker’s Union (CUT), 388 Césaire, Aimé, 148 Chaco War, 67 Chad, 291, 353 Chaffee, Roger, 399 Chakri dynasty, 61–62 Chamorro, Violeta, 312 Chaney, James, 405 Change to Win Federation, 16 Chapin, Dwight, 459 Chapultepec Peace Accords, 135 Charles, Prince of Wales, 38 Charles V, 132 Chávez, Cesar, 70 Chávez, Hugo, 60, 88–89, 288 Chechnya, xlii, 222, 348, 370, 375–376, 378 Checkpoint Charlie, 162 Cheney, Dick, 75 Chen Shui-bian, 117 Chen Yi, 475 Chernenko, Konstantin, 72, 73, 457 Chernobyl nuclear accident, xxxiv, 136, 173 Chernomyrdin, Viktor, 372, 373, 374, 466 Chewa, 54 Chia, Sandro, 38 Chiang Ching-kuo, 89–90, 117, 411 Chiang Kai-shek, 89, 90, 117, 267, 411, 444, 475 Chibás, Eduardo, 80 “Chicago Boys” (Chilean economists), 90–91, 340 Chile, 10, 41, 43, 90–91, 258, 262, 339– 340, 418 Chilean economists (“Chicago Boys”), 90–91 Chilembwe, John, 54 Chiluba, Frederick, 237 China, xxxi, xxxii, xxxv, xxxvi, 35, 43, 45, 89–91, 103–104, 119, 192, 194–195, 196, 201, 267–269, 390–391, 422– 423, 459–460, 475 civil war in, 39, 100, 228, 287. See also China, Republic of (ROC); People’s Republic of China (PRC) Great Leap Forward in, 119, 162, 175, 423 Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in, 91, 119, 162, 175–176, 192, 228, 268, 423, 475 human rights and dissidents in, 91–92 Hundred Flowers Campaign in, 196
Intellectual Movement in, 196 May Fourth Movement, 196 Tiananmen Square massacre in, 92, 119, 422–423, 460 U.S. relations with, 442–443 China, Republic of (ROC), 92, 17, 411, 440. See also Taiwan China—Border Disputes and the Cultural Revolution, 1948–1983, M162 Chinese Communist Party (CCP), 89, 90, 91, 92, 117, 119, 162, 176, 196, 199, 228, 267, 273, 391, 411, 475 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), 89, 90, 92, 117, 267, 272, 411, 471 Chinese-Vietnamese conflict, 92–93 Chirico, Giorgio de, 38 Chissano, Joaquim, 156 cholera, 240 Christian Democratic Union (CDU), 127, 168 Chun Doo Hwan, 250 Churchill, Winston, xxxix, 100, 166, 268 Çiller, Tansu, 431 Civil Liberties Act, 361 Civil Rights Act, 96, 97, 107, 178, 232, 237, 239, 245, 405 Civil Rights movement, U.S., 4, 16, 48, 73, 93–97, 107, 150, 155, 220, 231, 245, 285, 292, 396, 405, 418 Clark, Septima, 94 Clay, Cassius. See Muhammad Ali Clay, Lucius, 58 clean energy programs, 255 Clemente, Francesco, 38 Clemente, José, 258 Clerides, Glafcos, 114 Clinton, Bill, 16, 22, 43, 48, 74, 77, 98–99, 121, 171, 221, 301, 347, 358, 385, 446 Clinton, Chelsea, 98 Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative (CHAI), 98 Clinton-Hashimoto Security Declaration, 442 Clinton, Hillary, 98–99, 348 Clinton, Roger, 98 Club for the Support of Glasnost and Restructuring, 129 “Coalition of the Willing,” 185 Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), 186, 187 Coard, Bernard, 182 Code for the Eastern Churches, 230 Code of Canon Law for the Latin Church, 230 Coe, Sebastian, 326 coffee, xxxii cold war, xxxiii, xxxvi, xxxix, xl, xli, 1, 5, 9, 10, 11, 17–19, 22, 34, 35, 45, 48, 49, 55, 57, 58, 68, 74, 75, 94,
Index 99–102, 107, 109–110, 111, 112, 119, 127, 134, 135, 142, 149, 154, 157, 163, 164, 165, 174, 175, 179, 182, 193, 201, 204, 219, 221, 222, 233, 242, 249, 251, 259, 274, 285, 305, 307, 310, 321, 325, 328, 336, 353, 359, 363, 364–365, 367, 378, 382, 395, 399, 421, 438, 440, 442, 444, 446, 448, 450, 456 Cold War, The, 1946–1991, M161 Cole, USS, 14, 412, 462 Collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, The 1989–1991, M174 collective farming, 92 Collins, Michael, 220, 399 Colombia, 123, 129, 157, 262 La Violencia, 102–103 colonialism, xli, xlii, 54, 112–113, 151, 239, 344, 441 Colson, Charles, 458 Comaneci, Nadia, 326 Cominform, 425 Comintern, 191, 425 Commissions of Eastern Orthodox, 134 Committee on Government Contract Compliance (CGCC), 92 Committee to Reelect the President (CREEP), 347–348, 458 Common Market/European Economic Community (EEC), 143–144, 145, 165 Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), xxxviii, 370, 398 Commonwealth of Nations, 77, 104–106, 382 Communist Party, 49, 52, 58, 60, 71–73, 81, 82, 83, 85, 87, 112, 127, 128, 129, 134, 172, 173, 174, 191, 194, 205, 242, 243, 267, 287, 305, 308, 346, 367, 372, 386, 387, 390, 396, 397, 424, 425, 438, 448, 453, 456, 459, 466 Community Action Program, 178 computers, xxxiv–xxxv Conference of European Economic Cooperation (CEEC), 284 Congo, 273–274, 290–292 Democratic Republic of the, 118–119 Republic of the, 273–274 Congo River, 118 Congo War, First, 291 Congress of People’s Deputies, 370, 371, 372, 396, 466 Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), 66, 107, 155, 405 Congress of the People, 4 Congress Party, 227, 445 Connor, Eugene “Bull,” 96 Conqueror, HMS, 147 Constantine II, 179
485
Constitutional Progressive Party, 269 containment, U.S. policy of, 100, 198, 395 Conte, Lansana, 427 Continental Operational Command (COPCON), 349 Continua, Lotta, 108 contra war (Nicaragua), 105–106, 135, 214, 310, 312, 362 Convention of Defensive Alliance, 112 Convention People’s Party (CPP), 318 Coppola, Francis Ford, 108 Costa e Silva, Artur, 71 Costa Gomes, Francisco da, 345 Costahas, Lucio, 41 Coty, René, 163 Coubertin, Pierre de, 325, 327 Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON), 103–104, 166, 342, 346 Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), 95 Council of the European Union, 145 counterculture, xxxvii, 107–108 Courcel, Geoffroy de, 161 Cox, Archibald, 318, 458 Crick, Francis, xxxv Cristero Rebellion, 208 Croatia, 49, 51, 145, 164, 470 Cross, James, 354 Cruse, Harold, 66 Crush Malaysia, 206 Cuadra, Sergio de la, 90 Cuba, xl, 17–18, 34, 56–57, 102, 135, 141, 238, 243, 257, 258, 261, 279, 311 Cuban migration to U.S., 108–109 Cuban missile crisis, xl, 34, 56, 57, 109–111, 161, 238, 243, 290, 440 Cuban revolution, 11, 68, 70, 80, 81, 109, 111–112, 153, 208, 259, 310, 382, 410 cultural feminists, 151 Cultural Revolution, China, 91, 92, 119, 162, 176–177, 228, 268, 423, 475 Custer, George A., 16 Cyprus, 179, 276–277, 430 independence of, 112–113 Turkish invasion of, 114 Czechoslovakia, xl, 45, 100, 102, 128–129, 190, 346–347, 391, 406, 456, 457 Czech Republic, 190 D Dagestan, 375 al-Dahab, Abdel Rahman Mohammed Hassan Siwar, 429 Dalai Lama, 14th (Tenzin Gyatso), 115–116, 307, 423 Daley, Richard J., 208, 245 Dalí, Salvador, 35
486
Index
Dalindyebo, Jongintaba, 280 Daoud, Mohammed, 1, 2, 235 Darfur, xlii, 116–117 Darfur Peace Agreement, 407 Darwin, Charles, 356 D’Aubuisson, Roberto, 385 Davos Culture, 171 Day, Dorothy, 117 Dayan, Moshe, 25, 26 Dayton Accords, 51, 471 DDT, xxxiv Dean, John, 317, 458 death squads, 103, 137, 183, 418 Decker, Mary, 326 Declaration of Principles (DOP), 22 Declaration of Santiago among Ecuador, Chile, and Peru, 447 decolonization, 5, 105, 164 Decolonization in South and Southeast Asia, 1947–2000, M187 “Deep Throat,” 317 Defence Planning Committee (DPC), 321 Defiance Campaign, 281 deforestation, 137, 138, 141, 278, 425 De Gasperi, Alcide, 144, 145 de Klerk, F. W., 3, 4, 282 Dell, Virginia, 98 Delors, Jacques, 144 D’Emilio, John, 288 Demirel, Suleyman, 430 Democratic Patriotic Alliance of Kurdistan, 254 Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), 247–248 Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), 118 Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA), 235, 236 Democratic Republic of the Congo (Zaïre), 17, 118–119, 365, 380 Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, 130 Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), 191, 204 Democratic Revolutionary Alliance (ARDE), 106 Deng Xiaoping (Teng Hsiao-p’ing), xxxi, 91, 92, 119, 176, 192, 194, 199, 228, 423, 475 Denmark, 164 deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), xxxv Dergue, 194 Desai, Morarji, 203, 227 desegregation, 94, 107, 232 Desert Shield, 74 Desert Storm, 74 Deuba, Sher Bahadur, 309 de Valera, Éamon, 220 Díaz, Porfirio, 290 Díaz Balart, Mirta, 80 Díaz Ordaz, Gustavo, 209, 410
Dien Bien Phu, Battle of, xli, 8, 191, 204, 335, 448, 452 al-Din, Zakariyya Muhi, 134 Dinescu, Mircea, 130 Dipendra, 309 Dirksen, Everett, 451 Dirty War(s), 31, 72, 292, 293 disarmament, nuclear, 120–122 Disarmament Protocol, 106 disease, xxxv Distant Early Warning/DEW Line, 323, 324 Djibouti, 193 Djindjic, Zoran, 51 Do Kin Kyi, 46 Dole, Bob, 154 Dominican Republic, 68 “domino effect,” xli Donahue, Thomas R., 16 Douglas, Helen Gahagan, 315 Douglas, William, 366 Doxiadis, Constantinos A., 40 Drug Enforcement Agency, 316 drug wars, international, 122–124, 260, 262 Druze, 263 Duarte, Evita, 338 Duarte, José Napoleon, 135 Dubcˇek, Alexander, 129, 190, 346, 347 DuBois, W. E. B., 170 DuBois Club, 155 Dudayev, Dzhokhar, 375 Dukakis, Michael, 98 Dulles, John Foster, 23, 45, 395, 443, 444 Dunkirk, Battle of, 163 Durand Line, 1 Dutch New Guinea/West Irian, 124 Duvalier, François “Papa Doc,” 31, 124 Duvalier, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc,” 124 Dzhalalov, Abdulhafiz, 87 E Eanes, António Ramalho, 344, 345, 346 East Bank, 233 East Berlin, 102 Eastern bloc, collapse of, 127–130 Eastern Europe, xl, 39, 74, 100, 102, 145, 197, 287, 390, 391, 396 Easter Rising, 220 East Germany, xl, 58–60, 102, 127, 166, 285, 456 East Pakistan, 47, 331, 359 East Timor, 130, 343, 408 Ebadi, Shirin, xxxvii, 131 Eban, Abba, 25 Ecevit, Bulent, 432 ECHELON system, 102 Echevarría, Luis, 208, 290, 415 Eckert, J. Presper, xxxiv Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), 132
Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA), 131–132 Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), 266 Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA), 284 Economic Opportunity Act, 179, 180 economics, xxxii, xxxviii, 43–44, 74, 171, 172, 209, 261, 276, 374, 421–422 ECOWAS Monitoring Group (ECOMOG), 266 Ecuador, 262, 328, 447 Ecumenical movement, 132–133 Eden, Anthony, 23, 24 Effiong, Philip, 65 Egal, Mohammed Ibrahim, 392 Egypt, xxxvi, 19, 21, 23, 25, 41, 45–46, 47, 232, 267, 289, 304–305, 356–357, 422, 437–438 Egyptian Israeli Peace Treaty, 27, 222 Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, 14 Egyptian revolution, 133–135, 304 Ehrlichman, John, 458 Eiffel Tower, 9 Eisenhower, Dwight D., xxxiii, xli, 20, 24, 56, 74, 95, 100, 101, 111, 210, 238, 241, 288, 322, 442, 443, 444, 450 Elchibey, Abulfez, 32 electricity, xxxiv Elementary and Secondary Education Act, 179 Elizabeth II (queen of Great Britain), 76, 105, 419 Elizabeth, HMS, 296 Ellsberg, Daniel, 347, 458 El Mozote Massacre, 385 El Salvador, 181, 259, 261, 418 revolution and civil war in, 135 Eluay, Theys Hijo, 124 Elysée Treaty, 163 Enrile, Juan Ponce, 284 Entebbe Airport, hostage crisis in, 434 Enterprise, USS, 232 environment, xxxiv, 19 anthropogenic disasters in, 135–136 environmental problems, 81, 136–139, 141, 185 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 316 Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), xxxvi, 139–140, 149, 151 Erbakan, Necmettin, 431 Erdogan, Recep Tayyip, 432 Eritrea, 140–141, 142, 193, 194, 381 Erk Democratic Party, 87 Ervin, Sam, 317, 458 Escobar, Pablo, 123 Eshkol, Levi, 24, 25, 289 Espinosa, Luisa Amada, 311 Espionage Act, 287
Establishment, Treaty of, 113 Estonia, 52–53, 102, 397, 398, 457 Estrada, Joseph, 276 Ethiopia, 5, 140, 141, 193, 194 Federal Democratic Republic of, 141– 143 Ethiopia-Somalia Conflict, 143 ethnic cleansing, xlii, 114, 413, 470 Euphrates River, 186 Euro, 145, 169 Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC), 321 European Central Bank, 145 European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), 144 European Commission, 145 European Court of Justice, 145 European Economic Community (EEC)/ Common Market, xxxviii, 143–144, 145, 165–166, 403 European Monetary System (EMS), 144 European Recovery Program (ERP), 284, 295 European Space Agency, 401 European Union (EU), xxxviii, 43, 49, 53, 144, 145–146, 164, 167, 169, 190, 341, 342, 346, 418, 421, 432, 436 European Union HIV/AIDS Programme, 7 Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), 403, 418 evangelicalism, 261, 263 Evangelical Theological Society, 65 Evans, Mari, 66 Evers, Medgar, 96 Evian Accords, 162 Evren, Kenan, 430 Eyadéma, Étienne, 425 “Ezeiza massacre,” 293 F Fahd, 328, 412 Fahd Plan, 21 Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC), 93 al-Faisal, Turki, 412 Falklands War, 147–148, 419, 420 Fallujah, battles for, 187 Falun Gong, 148 Family Assistance Program (FAP), 316 Family Laws Ordinance, 48 famine/starvation, xxxi, xxxii, 138, 248, 365, 381, 393 Fang Lizhi (Fang Li-tzu), 91 Fanon, Frantz, 67, 149 Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), 135, 259 Farhang, Mear Mohammad Siddeq, 235 farming, xxxi, 92, 261 Farouk (king of Egypt), 134, 304, 356 Faso, Burkina, 19
Index Fatah, 212, 332 Fatah Palestinian fighters, 24 Fatherland–All Russia bloc, 375, 376 Fatherland Party (Isamaa), 53 Fathy, Hassan, 19 “Fat Man” (atomic bomb), 33 fatwa, 13, 14, 418 Faubus, Orval, 74, 94, 95 Faysal (king of Saudi Arabia), 328 fedayeen, 187 Federal-Aid Highway Act, 210 Federal Military Government (FMG), 64, 65 Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), 59, 127, 165 Federated Malay States, 275 Federation of Arab Republics, 351 Fedorov, Boris, 372 Felt, Mark, 317 feminism, xxxvi–xxxvii, 107, 140, 366, 406 worldwide, 149–152 Ferlinghetti, Lawrence, 57 Ferraro, Geraldine, 151, 361 fertilizers, xxxii Fez Plan, 21 Fianna Faíl, 220 Fifth Republic Movement (MQR), 89 Figueiredo, João, 72 Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation in Peru, 387 Finland, 100, 164, 285 Firmenich, Mario, 293 First Lightning, 34 First Nations, 327 Five-Year Plan, First and Second, 92, 175, 196, 386 “foco” theory of revolution, 183 Fonseca Amador, Carlos, 152–153, 310, 383 food production, xxxi–xxxiii, 180 Ford, Gerald, 79, 101, 153–154, 318, 361, 452, 459 Ford Foundation, 180 Fossey, Dian, 380 Foster, Norman, 39 Four Modernizations Program, 91, 120 Fox, Vicente, 208, 209, 290 France, xli, 8–9, 69, 117–118, 149, 164, 191, 204–205, 263, 291, 293–294, 305, 309, 310, 334–335, 425, 447– 448, 449, 450 Franco, Francisco, 38, 343, 402, 460 Franjieh, Sleiman, 263 Frankel, Jeffrey, 144 Franklin, Rosalind, xxxv Free Aceh Movement (GAM), 408 Freedom and People’s Rights Era, 265 Freedom Charter, 4 Freedom of Information Act, 459 Freedom Rides, 405
487
“Freedom Summer,” 96, 405 Free French Forces, 117, 163 Freeman, Cathy, 326 Free Officers movement, 133, 134, 219, 304, 323, 353, 356 Free Papua Movement (OPM), 124, 408 Free Speech Movement, 107, 154–155, 405 Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), 320, 321 FRELIMO, 156 French Committee for National Liberation, 163 French National Committee, 163 Frente Democrático Revolucionario (FDR), 135 Freud, Sigmund, 356 Friedan, Betty, xxxvi, 140, 150–151 Friedman, Milton, 90 Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance, Treaty of, 456–457 Friends of Life, 367 Fromme, Lynette, 154 Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ), 354 Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), 8 Fu’ad II, Ahmad, 134 Fuchs, Klaus, 367, 369 Fujimori, Alberto, 387 Fukuda Takeo, 246 Fulani, 64, 312 Furtado, Celso, 131 fusion bomb, 34 G G8, 171 Gabon, 64 Gadget, 30 Gagarin, Yuri, 72, 399 Gaidar, Yegor, 338, 371, 373 Gaitán, Gloria, 157 Gaitán, Jorge Eliécer, 80, 103, 157 Galarza, Ernesto, 70 Galaydh, Ali Khalif, 394 Gallegos, Rómulo, 60 Gallo, Robert, 6 Galtieri, Leopoldo Fortunato, 147 Gambarov, Isa, 32 Gandhi, Feroze, 158 Gandhi, Indira, 61, 158–159, 201, 202, 205, 227, 282, 290, 414, 418, 445 Gandhi, Mohandas K., 19, 158, 245, 306, 382 Gandhi, Rajiv, 158, 159–160, 202, 227, 404, 413 Gandhi, Sanjay, 158 Gandhi, Sonia S., 159–160, 227, 290 Gang of Four, 119, 162, 176, 423 Garang, John, 407 Garcia, José Guillermo, 385 García, Pedro Antonio Blanco, 403 García Buelas, Haydée, 30
488
Index
García Márquez, Gabriel, 258 Gard, Cándida, 30 Gard, Julia, 30 Gard, María Mercedes, 30 Gard de Antokoletz, María Adela, 30 Garde d’Haïti, 125 Garland, Judy, 164 Garrastazu Médici, Emilio, 71 Garvey, Marcus, 170, 278 Gates, Bill, xxxvii, 19 Gates, Melinda, xxxvii, 19 Gaud, William S., 180 Gaulle, Charles, de, xxxiii, 9, 160–163, 406, 427 gay liberation movements, 107, 162–164, 361 Gay-Related Immune Deficiency (GRID), 6, 164 Gaza Strip, 21, 23, 25, 29, 189, 211, 212, 213, 223, 305, 332, 333, 362, 418 Gehry, Frank, 38 Geisel, Ernesto, 71 Gemayel, Amin, 264 Gemayel, Bashir, 28, 264 gender inclusivity, 152 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), 164–165, 320 General Belgrano, ARA, 147 General Framework Agreement for Peace (Dayton Accords), 51 General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS), 29 Geneva Accords, 309, 447 Geneva Conference, 204, 340, 394, 449, 475 Geneva Plan, 23 Geneva Round, 164 Geneva Summit, 121 genocide, 123, 182, 183, 340, 380 Genscher, Hans-Dietrich, 168 George V (king of Great Britain), 296 Georgia, 253, 398 Gerber, Henry, 165 German Democratic Republic (GDR), 59, 103–104, 127, 166 German Economic Miracle, 166 Germany, 58–60, 112, 165, 197, 284–285, 303–304, 362, 379–380, 425 post–World War II, 165–170 Gestapo, 229 Ghadi, Ali Mohammed, 394 Ghamdi, Ahmed, al-, 462 Ghamdi, Hamza, al-, 462 Ghana, 55, 170–171, 279, 318, 365, 425 Ghannouchi, Rashid al-, 223 G.I. Bill, xxxv, 48 Gideon v. Wainwright, 178 Gingrich, Newt, 98 Ginsberg, Allen, 57 Giovanni, Nikki, 66
Giscard d’Estaing, Valéry, 427 Githongo, John, 240 glasnost, 32, 52, 102, 136, 173 Glaspie, April, 184 Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM), 7 Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise, 7 globalization, xxxii, xxxviii–xxxix, 171– 172, 422 Global Positioning System (GPS), 401 Global South, 19, 421–422 global warming, 255–256 Gnassingbe, Faure, 426 Goddard, Robert, 398 Golan Heights, 25, 26, 42, 233 Goldberg, Art, 155 Gold Coast, 55, 170 Golden Crescent, 124 Golden Triangle, 124 Goldwater, Barry, 98, 232 Gómez, Juan Vicente, 60 Gómez, Laureano, 103 Gompers, Samuel, 14 Gonçalves, Vasco, 344, 345 González, Delicia, 30 González, Felipe, 403 González, Virgilio, 458 Goodman, Andrew, 405 Gorbachev, Mikhail, xli, 2, 52, 72, 73, 81, 83, 84, 85, 87, 102, 122, 127, 167, 172–174, 347, 361, 362, 369, 370, 371, 392, 396, 397, 398, 421, 435, 457, 466 Gorbachev, Raisa, 172 Gore, Al, 77, 171 Gortari, Carlos Salinas de, 209 Goulart, João, 70 “Goulash Communism,” 197 Governing Junta of National Reconstruction (JGRN), 311 Governments of the Middle East and North Africa, M173 Gowon, Yakuba, 64, 313 Graham, Billy, 174–175 Grameen Bank, 19 Granma, 111 Great Britain, 23–24, 49, 121, 149–150, 192, 239, 254, 277, 284–285, 305, 307, 308, 313, 364–365 Great Depression, 48, 139, 140, 258, 299, 343, 405 Great Leap Forward, China, 92, 122, 162, 174, 175, 423 Great Patriotic War, 172 Great Society, U.S., 16, 177–178, 232, 451, 452 Greece, 100, 281 Greek Junta, 178–180, 277 Green, William, 15 Green Belt Revolution, 19
Greenglass, David, 367, 369 greenhouse gas emissions, 255–256 green line, 223 Green March, 294, 402, 460 Green Party, 168 Green Revolution, xxxii, 136, 180–181, 204, 421–422 Greer, Germaine, xxxvi Grenada, U.S. invasion of, 77, 182–183, 363 Griffins, Martha, 140 Griffith-Joyner, Florence, 326 Grissom, Virgil, 399 Griswold v. Connecticut, 151, 366 Grivas, Georgios, 113 Grósz, Károly, 128 Group Areas Act, 3, 280 Groupe des Dombes, 133 Grunitzky, Nicolas, 425 GSG-9, 393 Guam Doctrine, 317 Guarantee, Treaty of, 113, 114 Guatemala, 20, 77, 259, 261, 289–290 civil war in, 182–183 Guebuza, Armando Emilio, 156 Guerrero Santiago, Noel, 383 Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP), 183 guerrilla warfare, 4, 8, 12, 71, 77, 80, 103, 111, 120, 130, 153, 182, 184, 236, 253, 258, 283–284, 293, 365, 408, 425, 434, 451, 453 Guevara, Ernesto “Che,” 56, 80, 111, 112, 183–184, 259, 383 Guided Democracy, 205 Guillén Vicente, Rafael Sebastián, 474 Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), xxxviii Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, xli, 232, 450, 451, 452 Gulf War, First, 14, 22, 42, 98, 184–185, 198, 254, 328, 332, 440, 442 Gulf War, Second, xlii, 105–108, 198, 276, 349 Günes¸ , Turan, 114 Gurage, 142 Gusinsky, Vladimir, 377 Gusmão, Xanana, 130 Guttmacher, Alan, 366 Guttmacher, Manfred, 366 Guzmán, Abimael, 387 Gyanendra (king of Nepal), 309 H Habash, George, 332 Habibie, Jusuf, 408 Habitat for Humanity, 80 Hadith, 356 Hague Agreement, 124, 409 Haig, Alexander, 418 Haile-Mariam, Mengistu, 194 Haile Selassie, 141, 142, 143, 193
Haiti, 31–32, 124–125 Hakim Amr, Abd, al-, 134 Haldeman, H. R., 458, 459 Haley, Alex, 279 Hallstein, Walter, 145, 166 Hamas, 22, 23, 30, 189, 212, 223, 224, 333, 418 Hamid II, Abdul (Abdulhamid II), 112 Haniyeh, Ismail, 212, 224, 333 Happold, Edmund, 38 Haram al-Sharif, 21, 23, 212 Hari Singh, Maharaja, 201, 206 Harper, Stephen, 77, 356 Harrar, Heinrich, 115 Harriman, W. Averell, 284 Hashemite dynasty, 219, 233–234 Hasina, Sheikh, 359 Hassan, Abshir Farah, 394 Hassan II (king of Morocco), 294, 402, 460, 461 Hatoyama, Ichiro, 265 Hausa, 64, 312, 313 Havel, Václav, 129, 190 Hawali, Safar al, 13 Hawatmeh, Naif, 332 Hawking, Stephen, xxxiii Hayden, Casey, 406 Hayden, Tom, 405 Hazmi, Nawaf al-, 462 Hazmi, Salem al-, 462 Haznawi, Ahmed al-, 462 Head Start, 177 Hearst, William Randolph, 174 Heath, Edward, 419 Hebe de Bonafini, 31 Hedgewar, K. B., 61 Heiden, Eric, 316 Hernandez, Esequiel, 123 Hertzog, J. M., 3 Higher Education Act, 177 Highly Active Anti-retroviral Therapy, 6 Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC), 143 Hiller, Kurt, 164 Hillman, Sidney, 15 Hinduism, 61, 201, 203, 206–208, 227, 445 hip hop, xxxix hippie counterculture, xxxvii, xxxix, 48, 57, 108, 228 Hirohito (emperor of Japan), 7, 8 Hiroshima/Nagasaki, atomic bombings of, 33, 34, 120, 367 Hirschfeld, Magnus, 164 Hiss, Alger, 287, 315 Histadrut, 288, 289 Hitler, Adolf, 52, 359, 453 Hizbollah, 21, 28, 42, 190–191, 213, 223, 224, 362, 418 Ho Chi Minh, xli, 40, 55, 191–193, 204, 310, 447, 448, 450, 452, 453
Index Ho Chi Minh City, 449 Ho Chi Minh Trail, 204–205, 340, 341, 449 Hockney, David, 38 Hoffman, Paul G., 284 Hojatieh, 217 Holiday Economics, 276 “Hollywood Ten,” 287 Holocaust, 362 Holy Flight, 222 Homeland Security, Department of, 76, 463 Homeland War, 51 Homo sapiens, 138 Honecker, Erich, 127, 168 Hong Kong, 43, 192, 275 Hoover, J. Edgar, 246, 287 Hopper, Dennis, 108 Horn, Gyula, 128 Horn of Africa, 141, 193–194 Houphouet-Boigny, Félix, 427 Hourani, Akram, 47 House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), 154, 287, 315 Housing and Urban Development Act, 177 Houston, Charles Hamilton, 286 Hrawi, Elias, 264 Hua Guofeng (Hua Kuo-feng), 162, 176 Hubble, Edwin P., xxxiii–xxxiv, 400 Hubble Space Telescope, 400–401 Hue, Battle of, 187 Hu Jintao (Hu Chin-t’ao), 92, 194–195, 229 Hu Yaobang (Hu Yao-pang), 195–196 Huk Rebellion, 196 Human Development Index, 143, 267 Human Genome Project, xxxv human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), xxxv, xxxvii, 6, 17, 99, 304, 361, 425 human rights, 5, 9, 16, 30, 79, 91–92, 129, 131, 135, 179, 182, 183, 229 328, 340, 385, 404, 408, 435 Humphrey, Hubert, 232, 246, 316 Hundertwasser, Friedensreich, 39 Hundred Flowers Campaign, China, 196 Hungarian revolt, 24, 197–198 Hungary, xl, 100, 102, 127, 128, 164, 197, 242, 285, 457 Hunt, E. Howard, 348, 458 Huntington, Samuel, 171 hurricanes, 76, 137 Husain, Abdirizak Haji, 393 Husák, Gustav, 347 Husayn, 305 Hussain, Mohammad, 235 Hussein (king of Jordan), 21, 29, 184, 233, 358 Hussein, Qusay, 186, 199 Hussein, Saddam, xlii, 13, 22, 42, 48, 184, 185, 187, 198–199, 213, 214, 218, 219, 241, 242, 254, 332, 362, 412
489
Hussein, Uday, 186, 199 Hutus, 379, 380 hydrogen bomb, xxxiv, xl, 34 I Ibáñez, Carlos, 10 Iberian Pact, 343 Ibn Taymiyyah, 14 Ibo. See Igbo Ibo, Jhon, 124 Ibrahim, Anwar, 278 Iceland, 164 Idris (king of Libya), 353 Iffat, 384 Igbo, 64, 312, 313 “I Have a Dream” speech, 96, 98, 245 Iliescu, Ion, 50, 130 immigration, 109 Immigration Act, 261 Immigration Reform and Control Act, 261 Immorality Act, 3 Imperial Conference, 104 Imperial Rule Party, 265 improvised explosive devices (IEDs), 187 Indemnity Ordinance, 359 India, xlii, 45, 49, 56, 61, 101, 105, 138, 158–159, 180, 181, 201–203, 227, 296, 306–307, 359, 386–387, 389–390, 413–414, 445–446 Indian National Congress (INC), 158, 201, 296, 306 Indian-Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act, 16 Indies Social Democratic Association (ISDV), 205 Indigenous Revolutionary Anti-Zapatista Movement (MIRA), 474 Indochina War, 1946–1954, M163 Indochina War(s), 191, 202, 204–205, 475 Indochinese Communist Party (ICP), 191 Indonesia, xl, 12, 43, 44, 130, 408–409 Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), 205– 206, 408 Indonesian Nationalist Union (PNI), 205, 409 Indo-Pakistani War(s), 48, 49, 63, 158, 204–206, 297, 317, 386, 387, 465 Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accords, 204 Industrial Revolution, xxxiii Indus Water Treaty, 48 Information Awareness Office (IAO), 463 Inönü, Ismet, 425 Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), 208–209 Instrument of Accession, 206 Integrated Mediterranean Programme (IMP), 144 Intelligence Oversight Board (IOB), 385
490
Index
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), 328 Inter-American Committee Against Terrorism (CICTE), 328 Inter-American Development Bank, 312 Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD), 328 Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, 148 Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), 34, 120–122 Interim Iraqi Government, 187 Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBMs), 120–122, 238 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), 120–122, 173 Internal Revenue Service (IRS), U.S., 67 International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, 7 International Atomic Energy Agency, 35 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), 461 International Conference for Humanity Against Neoliberalism, 474 International Control Commission, 201 International Criminal Court, 51, 295 International Criminal Tribunal, 380 International Fund for Agricultural Development, 381 International Ladies Garment Workers Union, 15 International Military Staff (IMS), 322 International Monetary Fund (IMF), xxxvi, xxxviii, 18, 90, 119, 132, 143, 164, 171, 172, 209–210, 233, 240, 251, 314, 374, 388, 403, 427, 429 International Olympic Committee (IOC), 327 International Organizations, M179 International Rice Research Institute, 180 International Space Station, 400, 401 International Trade Administration, 320 International Trade Organization (ITO), 164 International Women’s Day, 151 Internet, xxxiii internment camps, 8, 361 Interpol, 37 interstate highway system, U.S., 210–211 Intifada, 233, 358 al-Aqsa, 30, 189, 212–213 first, 211–212 Inuit, 323 Ioannidis, Dimitrios, 179 Iran, 40, 49, 75, 123, 133, 190, 213–214, 215, 241–242, 253, 295 Iran-contra affair, 214–215, 217 Iran hostage crisis, 9, 79, 101, 215–216, 242, 361 Iranian revolution, 79, 216–218, 222, 418, 430
Iran-Iraq Treaty of International Boundaries and Good Neighborliness, 198 Iran-Iraq War, 184, 198, 211, 213, 214, 218–219, 242, 328, 362 Iraq, 10, 14, 25, 47, 48, 49, 74, 75, 76, 198–199, 241, 253, 254, 328, 440 invasion and war in, 184–188 1958 revolution in, 198, 219–220 Iraqi constitution, 187 Iraq Survey Group (ISG), 187 Iraq War, 220 Iraq War Resolution, 99 Irish Republican Army (IRA), 220–221, 296, 418, 420 Iron Curtain, xl, 74, 100, 251 Iskandarov, Akbarsho, 84 Islam, xxxvii, xxxix, 2, 9 Islambuli, Khaled al-, 222 Islamic Association (Sarekat Islam), 205 Islamic Charter Front (ICF), 428 Islamic feminists, 152 Islamic Group, 222 Islamic Jihad, 212, 214 Islamic law/sharia, 255, 384, 407, 428 Islamic Liberation Organization, 222 Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), 81, 85 Islamic Oikya Jot, 56 Islamic Party of Liberation, 85, 88 Islamic Renaissance Movement, 87 Islamic Renaissance Party, 85 Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, 236 Islamic Republic of Iran, 213–214 Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), 189 Islamic Revival Party, 84 Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), 223 Islamic Tendency Movement (ITM), 223 Islamist movements, 87, 221–224, 294, 353–354 Israel, xlii, 14, 20–23, 190, 231, 233–234, 264, 288–289, 305, 358, 362 Israel Following the 1967 War, M168 Israeli-Arab-Palestinian peace negotiations, 20–23 Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), 192 Itagaki Taisuke, 265 Italian Somaliland, 194 Italy, 140 Ivory Coast, 64 Ivy Mike, 34 Iyad, Abu, 29 J Jacinto Canek Revolt, 473 Jackson, Angela, 66–67 Jackson, Jesse, 245 Jackson-Vanik Amendment, 102 Jadid, Salah, 41 Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB), 56
Jakesˇ, Milosˇ, 129 Jamaica, 282 James Webb Space Telescope, 400 Janata Party, 159, 203, 227 janjawiid, 116–117, 407 Japan, xxxvii–xxxviii, xli, 7–8, 40, 43, 45, 164, 191, 196, 204, 243, 246–247, 248, 267, 277, 283–284, 334, 363, 382, 389, 418, 442, 468 Liberal Democratic Party in, 265–266 Jarrah, Ziad, 462 Jarring, Gunnar, 26 Jaruzelski, Wojciech, 128, 391–392 Jaworski, Leon, 458 jazz, xxxix, 57, 301 Jean, Michaëlle, 77 Jenkins, Esau, 94 Jerusalem, 23, 25, 211, 233, 332, 355 Jesus movement, 228 Jesus (Christ) of Nazareth, 65 Jewish Agency, 289 Jewish populations, 169 Jewish Zealots, 413 Jiang Qing (Chiang Ch’ing), 160, 176 Jiang Zemin (Chiang Tse-min), 228–229, 423, 460 jihad, 12, 14, 222, 418 Jihad, Abu, 29 Jim Crow system, 244, 292 Jimmu, 7 Jinnah, Mohammed Ali, 241, 296, 306 Job Corps, 177 John XXIII (pope), 38, 230, 446 John Paul II (pope), 117, 229–231, 312, 341, 416, 446 Johnson, Ben, 326 Johnson, Lady Bird, 231 Johnson, Lyndon B., xli, 25, 96, 97, 177, 204, 231–232, 238, 239, 245, 246, 286, 310, 316, 317, 364–365, 450– 451, 452 Johnson, Sam Ealy, Jr., 231 Johnston, Eric, 287 Joint Task Force 6 (JTF-6), 123 Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), 6, 7 Jones, LeRoi, 66 Jordan, 21, 22, 25, 27, 47, 263, 305 Hashemite monarchy in, 233–234 Joseph, Keith, 420 Jowers, Loyd, 246 Juan Carlos (king of Spain), 402 Junejo, Muhammad Khan, 476 Junta of National Salvation, 344 K Kabaki, Mwai, 240 Kabila, Joseph, 118, 119 Kabila, Laurent-Désiré, 118, 119, 291 Kaczynski, Jarosław, 341–342
Kaczynski, Lech, 342 Kádár, János, 128, 197, 456 Kagame, Paul, 291, 380 Kalmbach, Herbert, 459 Karadz˘ic´, Radovan, 470 Kara Kum Canal, 85 Karamanlis, Constantine, 113, 114, 179 Karamat, Jehangir, 297 Karameh, Battle of, 29 Kargil War, 203 Karimov, Islam, 87–88 Karmal, Babrak, 235–236 Karzai, Abdul Ahad, 236 Karzai, Ahmed Wali, 236 Karzai, Hamid, 3, 236 Kasavubu, Joseph, 273, 291 Kashmir, xlii, 203, 206–207, 297, 307, 331, 414, 445 Kasyanov, Mikhail, 377 Kataeb, 28 Katanga army, 291 Katayama, Tetsu, 468 Kaufman, Irving R., 287 Kaunda, Kenneth, 237 Kayibanda, Grégoire, 379 Kazakhstan, 81–82, 121, 398 Kazhegeldin, Akezhan, 82 Kelly, Florence, 139 Kelly, HMS, 296 Kelly, Roberto, 90 Kennedy, Caroline Bouvier, 237 Kennedy, Edward, 347 Kennedy, Jacqueline Bouvier, 237 Kennedy, John F., xl, 11, 16, 56, 57, 77, 97, 98, 101, 109, 110, 116, 153, 164, 177, 206, 231, 237–239, 245, 279, 315, 322, 336, 395, 423 Kennedy, John F., Jr., 237 Kennedy, Joseph P., 237 Kennedy, Patrick Bouvier, 237 Kennedy, Robert F., 232, 316 Kennedy, Rose, 237 Kennedy Round, 164 Kent State, 402 Kenya, xxxvi, 19, 239–240, 365, 393, 419, 422 Kenyatta, Jomo, 170, 239, 240 Kerouac, Jack, 57 Kerr, Clark, 154, 155 KGB, 73, 348, 366, 394 Khalaf, Salah, 29 Khalq, Fedayin, al-, 218 Khameini, Ali, al-, 213 Khalid Sheikh, Mohammed, 14, 462 Khan, Ghulam Ishaq, 331 Khan, Khair Mohammed, 236 Khan, Liaquat Ali, 240–241 Khasbulatov, Ruslan, 372 Khidr, Muhammad, 8 Khmer Issarack, 204
Index Khmer Rouge, 95, 191, 205, 340–341 Khodorkovsky, Mikhail, 373 Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah, 81, 103, 213, 215, 216, 217, 218, 224, 243– 244, 361 Khrushchev, Nikita, xxxiii, xl, 32, 57, 71–72, 100, 102, 104, 109, 110, 120, 166, 172, 175, 196, 197, 238, 242–243, 315, 346, 375, 390 Kibaki, Mwai, 239 Kikuyu, 240 Killy, Jean-Claude, 326 Kilo Sera 2, 309 Kimathi, Dedan, 239 Kim Dae Jung, 248, 250, 251 Kim Il Sung, 39, 243–244, 247, 248, 272, 334, 363 Kim Jong Il, 243–244, 247, 248, 251, 272 Kim Jong Pil, 250 Kim Young Sam, 250 King, Alberta Williams, 244 King, Coretta Scott, 244 King, Dexter, 246 King, Martin Luther, Jr., xxxvii, 66, 94, 96, 97, 98, 107, 232, 244–246, 286, 292, 405 King, Martin Luther, Sr., 244 King, Mary, 405 King, Rodney, 97 King Foundation, 244 kingpin strategy, 122 Kirchner, Néstor, 388 Kirienko, Sergei, 374, 375 Kirkland, Lane, 16 Kissinger, Henry, 21, 27, 317, 385, 443 Kiszczak, Czesław, 128 Kitaj, R. B., 38 Kleberg, Richard, 235 Kocharyan, Robert, 33 Kodjo, Edem, 426 Kohl, Helmut, 168 Koirala, G. P., 309 Koizumi Junichiro, 246–247 Kolbin, Gennady, 81 Komarov, Vladimir, 399 Koornhof, Piet, 454 Korbut, Olga, 326 Korea, xxxii, xxxviii, xl, 100, 243–244, 247 Democratic People’s Republic of (DPRK), 247–248 Republic of (ROK), 45, 248–251, 363 See also North Korea; South Korea Korean Air Flight 007, 102 Korean War, xli, 18–19, 39, 94, 100, 244, 248, 249, 251–252, 268, 287, 362, 390, 426, 438, 439 Korean War, The, 1950–1953, M164 Kosovo, 49, 51–52, 471
491
Kosygin, Alexei, 48, 72, 206, 387, 413 Kowloon Peninsula, 192 Kravchuk, Leonid, 435 Krenz, Egon, 127, 168 Krim, Belkacem, 8 Kuala Lumpur declaration, 44 Kubilai Khan, 423 Kubitschek, Juscelino, 252 Kuchma, Leonid, 436 Kuchuk, Fazil, 113 Kufuor, John, 170 Ku Klux Klan (KKK), 95, 96, 278 Kulov, Feliks, 83 Kunaev, Dinmukhamed, 81 Kuomintang (KMT), 89, 90, 92, 117, 267, 272, 411, 475 Kurdish Worker’s Party (PKK), 253, 418 Kurdistan, 253, 430, 431 Kurd populations, 185, 187, 198, 199, 219, 253–254, 429, 431 Kursk, 349 Kuwait, xxxiii, xl, 13, 22, 40, 74, 184, 198, 199, 219, 254–255, 328, 412, 422, 440, 468 Kwalik, Kelly, 124 Kwasniewski, Aleksander, 341 Kyoto Protocol and CO2 Emissions, The, M181 Kyoto Treaty, 255–256 Kyrgyzstan, 81, 82–83, 85, 398 L labor, 14–16, 69–70, 388, 391–392, 422 Labor Code, 20 Lahore Declaration, 203, 208 Laika, 398 Lambda Istanbul, 164 Land Act, 3 Landsbergis, Vytautas, 397 Laos, 8, 44, 123, 191, 204, 205, 238, 334–335, 449 Laporte, Pierre, 354 Laski, Harold, 282 Latifi, Otakhon, 84 Latin America, 11, 30, 39, 101, 111, 133– 134, 361, 362 cultures in, 257–258 politics of, 258–259 social issues in, 260–263 Latin American Ground School (LAGS), 384 Latin American Youth Conference, 157 Latvia, 52–53, 102, 173, 397, 398, 457 Lausanne Covenant, 65 Lausanne Treaty, 112, 253 La Violencia, Colombia, 102–103, 157 Lazio, Rick, 99 League for the Independence of Vietnam (Vietnam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi), 191, 204
492
Index
League of Nations, 303, 375, 435 Leakey, Richard, 240 Lebanon, 47, 190–191, 223, 253, 362, 418 civil war in, 28, 41–42, 190, 263– 265, 438 Lechín, Juan, 67, 336 Le Duan, 204 Le Duc Tho, 317 Lee Kuan Yew, 389 Lee Teng-hui, 118, 411 Lefebvre, Marcel, 231 Legal Services Program, 177 Lend-Lease, 284 Lenin, Vladimir, 173, 423 Lenin Peace Prize, 73 lentivirus, 6 Leonardo da Vinci, 38 Leonov, Aleksei, 399 Letelier, Orlando, 414 Lévesque, René, 354 Lewinsky, Monica, 99 Lewis, Carl, 326 Lewis, John, 15, 96 Liberal Democratic Party, Japan, 246, 247, 265–266 Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA), 17 liberation theology, 260, 263 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), 159, 404, 412 Liberia, civil wars in, 266–267 Liberty, USS, 25 Libya, xxxi, xxxvi, 213, 267, 327, 353– 354, 362, 434 Liddy, G. Gordon, 348, 458 Li Hongzhi, 148 Likud Party, 22, 23, 28 Lilov, Alexander, 129 Lin Biao (Lin Piao), 176, 267–268 Line of Control (LOC), 66, 201, 207 Lion, HMS, 296 Li Peng, 423 Lisbon Protocol, 122 literature, 268–272 American writers, 269–270 Asian writers, 271–272 British writers, 268–269 European and South American writers, 270–271 of Middle East and India, 271 other authors in English, 270 Lithuania, 52–53, 102, 173, 396, 397, 398, 457 Little Boy, 33 Little Ice Age, 138 Liu Binyan (Liu Ping-yen), 91, 197 Liu Shaoqi (Liu Shao-ch’i), 120, 176, 267, 268 Livingstone, David, 54 Li Zongren (Li Tsung-jen), 272–273 Lleras Camargo, Alberto, 103
Lleras Restrepo, Carlos, 103 Llosa, Mario Vargas, 208 Lochner v. New York, 139 Locsin, Leandro V., 40 Lodge, Henry Cabot, 237 Lome Peace Accord, 266 London, terrorist attacks in, xlii London Conference, 58 Long March, 120, 267, 272, 475 Lon Nol, 205 López, Santos, 383 López, Victor Tirado, 383 López Mateos, Adolfo, 209 López Portillo, José, 209 Los Alamos National Laboratory, 287 Love Canal, xxxiv Lowry, L. S., 38 Luciani, Albino, 229 Lugard, Frederick, 317 Luisa Amada Espinosa Nicaraguan Women’s Association (AMNLAE), 315 Lumumba, Patrice, 273–275, 291 Lushan Conference, 175 Luther, Martin, 132 Lutheran Church, 132, 260 Lutheran World Federation, 133 Lutuli, Albert, 4 Luwum, Janani, 434 Luxembourg, 165 M Maastricht Treaty, 144, 145 Maathai, Wangari Muta, xxxvi, 19 Macao, 275, 347 Macapagal, Diosdado, 275 Macapagal-Arroyo, Gloria, 275–276 MacArthur, Douglas, 251, 382 Macedonia, 49, 51 Machel, Samora, 156 Macmillan, Harold, 419 Madani, Abbas, 223 Maddox, USS, 205, 451 Madhubuti, Haki, 66 Madiba, 280 Madikizela, Noam Weinberg, 281 madrasas, 222 Madres de Plaza de Mayo, Argentina, 30–31 Madrid, Miguel de la, 209 Madrid, terrorist attacks in, xlii, 403, 415 Madrid Conference, 212 Magd, Kamal Abul, 223 Magruder, Jeb, 458 Magsaysay, Ramon, 196 Maharlikas, 283–284 Mahdi, Sadiq, al-, 428 Mahathir, Mohamed, 278 Mahendra, 308 Mahidol, Ananda, 62
Mahmud, Shah, 1 Mahmudi, Abdul Rahman, 235 Major, John, 221, 417 Major League Baseball, 94 Major Regional Trading Groups, M180 Major Terrorist Attacks since 1979, M189 Makarezos, Nicholas, 179 Makarios III, 113, 114, 179, 276–277 Makhkamov, Kakhar, 83 Malaka, Tan, 207 malaria, xxxviii, 17, 240 Malawi, 54 Malaysia, 40, 43, 44, 385 Federation of, 277–278 Malcolm X, 66, 97, 278–280, 286 Malenkov, Georgy, 242 Malinke, 427 Manar, Al-, 190 Manchuria, 247 Mandela, Nelson, xxxvii, 3, 4, 99, 280–282 Manhattan Project, 33, 34, 367 Manila Pact, 394–395 Manley, Michael, 282 Manley, Norman, 282 Manpower Development and Training Act, 177 Manson, Charles, 154 Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung), xxxi, xxxvi, 39, 66, 91, 92, 115, 120, 162, 175, 176, 196, 267, 268, 271, 308, 316, 386, 387, 390, 421, 423–424, 442, 475 Marcantonio, Vito, 319 March on Washington, 96 Marcinkiewicz, Kazimierz, 345 Marcos, Ferdinand, 196, 283–284, 338 Marcos, Imelda, 40, 283–284 Marcos, sub-commander, 473, 474 Mariel boatlift, 109 Marighela, Carlos, 71 Marley, Bob, 182 Maronite Christians, 27, 28, 263 Mars, 401 Marshall, George, 58, 284, 411, 475 Marshall, Thurgood, 73, 74, 285–286 Marshall Plan, 11, 165, 284–285, 346 Martínez, Boris, 426 Martinez, Eugenio, 458 Martínez, María Estela, 338 Marx, Karl, 356 Marxism, 258–259 Masaliev, Absamat, 82 Maskhadov, Aslan, 375 Matanza (Massacre), 135 Mauchly, John W., xxxiv Mau Mau Rebellion, 239 Maurin, Peter, 117 Mauritania, 460 Max, Burle, 41 Mayans, 262, 473, 474
Mayardit, Salva Kiir, 407 Mayorga, Silvio, 383 Mazen, Abu, 212 Mazière, Lothar de, 168 Mazowiecki, Tadeusz, 128 Mbeki, Thabo, 4 McCarthy, Eugene, 316 McCarthy, Joseph, 154, 237, 287–288, 357 McCarthyism, 287–288 McCord, James, Jr., 458 McCormick, Sarah, 366 McCorvey, Norma, 366, 367 McGovern, George, 79, 198 McLuhan, Marshall, 171 McMahon, Thomas, 296 McMahon Line, 307 McNamara, Robert, 450, 451 Meany, George, 15, 16 Mecca, 279, 383 mechanization, 181 Medicaid, 177 Medicare, 177 medicine, xxxiii, xxxv Medieval Warm Period, 138 Medina, 383 Meech Lake Accord, 354 Meese, Edwin, 320 Meiji (emperor of Japan), 8 Meiji Restoration, 7–8, 265 Meir, Golda, 288–289, 358 Melvill, Mike, 401 Menchú, Rigoberta, xxxvii, 289–290 Menchú, Vicente, 289 Menderes, Adnan, 113, 429, 430 Méndez, Juan Carlos, 90 Menendez, Mario, 148 Menominee peoples, 16 Meredith, James, 95, 107 Merkel, Angela, 167 Mernissi, Fatima, xxxvii Meseveni, Yoweri, 291 Meshaal, Khaled, 189 Metalworkers’ Union of Croatia, 425 Methodist Church, 280 Mexican Revolution, 208, 290, 473 Mexico, xxxii, 41, 43, 69–70, 122, 123, 180, 208–209, 261, 262, 263, 320– 321, 414–415, 473–475 agrarian reforms in, 290 Meyerson, Martin, 154 Michiko (empress of Japan), 8 Micombero, Michel, 379 Middle East, xxxi, xxxvi, xlii, 11–14, 101, 233 Middle East Treaty Organization (METO), 48 Mihailovic´, Draža, 425 Mihama nuclear accident, 136 Mihdhar, Khalid, al-, 462 Miliken v. Bradley, 97
Index Militas Populares Anti-Sandinistas (MILPAS), 105, 106 Millennium Democratic Party (MDP), 251 Millennium Summit, xxxviii, 422 Miller, Arthur, 288 Miloševic´, Slobodan, 51, 469–470, 471 Ming dynasty, 423 Mining Corporation of Bolivia (COMIBOL), 67 ministate solution, 30 Ministry of Agricultural Development and Agrarian Reform (MIDINRA), 311 Miranda v. Arizona, 178 Mirza, Iskander, 48 Missionaries of Charity, 416 Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), 96 Mistral, Gabriela, 258 MISURASATA, 106 Mitchell, John, 458 Mitterrand, François, 148, 162 Mladenov, Patur, 129 mlolongo voting system, 239 Mlynar, Zdenek, 172 Moawad, René, 264 Mobutu, Joseph, 119, 273 Mobutu Sese Seko, 290–292 Model Cities Act, 177 Modrow, Hans, 168 Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, 49, 198, 213, 218, 241 Mohammed, Murtala, 64, 314 Moldavia, 397, 398 Molotov, Vyacheslav M., 284 “mommy track,” 151 Mondale, Walter, 98, 361 Mondlane, Eduardo, 156 Mongatu-Chelmsford Reform, 306 Mongolia, 103–104 Mongols, 423 Montagnier, Luc, 6 Montenegro, 49, 51–52 Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott, 94, 244, 292 Montoneros (Argentine urban guerrillas), 71, 259, 292–293 Montt, Efraín Ríos, 385 Mookerjee, Syama Prasad, 441 Moon landing, 238, 316, 399, 400 Moore, Henry, 38 Moore, Jeremy, 148 Moore, Sara Jane, 154 Moqued, Majed, 462 Morales, Evo, 384 Morocco, 8, 293–294, 402, 460 Moscow-Beijing Axis, 400 Moscow Summit, 122 Moses, Robert, 95 Mossadeq, Mohammad, 295 Mostar Bridge, 37, 39
493
Mothers of the Foundling Line, 31 motion picture industry, xxxviii–xxxix Moulin, Jean, 163 mountain gorillas, 380 Mountbatten, George, 296 Mountbatten, Louis, 201, 206, 220, 295– 296, 307, 418 Mountbatten, Philip. See Philip, Prince, duke of Edinburgh Mouskos, Mikhalis Khristodoulou, 276– 277 Movement de la Revolution (MPR), 291 Movement of Arab Renaissance, 47 Mozambique, 111, 156, 344, 365 Mubarak, Hosni, 21, 222 Mugabe, Robert, 296–297, 365 Muhammad V (king of Morocco), 293–294 Muhammad VI (king of Morocco), 461 Muhammad, Ali Mahdi, 393, 394 Muhammad, Elijah, 279 mujahideen, 222, 418 Mukherjee, Shyama Prasad, 227 Mukhtar, Omar, 267 Mulamba, Leonard, 291 Mulder, Connie, 454 Muller v. Oregon, 139 Mulroney, Brian, 327 Multi-Country HIV/AIDS Program (MAP), 7 multiculturalism, 171 multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs), 121 Muluzi, Bakili, 55 Munich Olympics, 332, 393, 418 Murray, Donald Gaines, 286 Murray, Philip, 15 Murrow, Edward R., 288 Museveni, Yoweri, 434, 435 Musharraf, Pervez, 297–298 music, xxxix, 108, 257, 298–302 classical and stage, 298–299 fusion, 299–300 popular styles, 301–302 songwriters and artists, 300–301 Muslim Brotherhood, 29, 42, 133–134, 221, 304–305, 356, 428 Muslim League, 241, 307 Muslim populations, xxxix, 1, 87, 201, 203, 206–207 Muslim Students League, 359 Mutalibov, Ayaz, 32 Mutesa, Edward, 433 Mutual Cooperation and Security, Treaty of, 442 Mutual Defense Treaty, 411 mutually assured destruction (MAD), xl, 34–35, 101, 102 Muzorewa, Abel, 365 Mwinyi, Ali Hassan, 324 Myanmar, 44, 46, 201, 306, 441
494
Index
My Lai, 452 Myrdal, Alva, 19 Myrdal, Gunnar, 19 N NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund (LDF), 286 Nabiyev, Rakhmon, 84 Nagako (empress of Japan), 8 Nagasaki/Hiroshima, atomic bombings of, 33, 34, 121, 364 Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, 32 Naguib, Muhammad, 134, 304, 305 Nagy, Imre, 197–198, 346, 356 Nahhas, Mustafa, 133 Al Nahyan, Khalifa bin Zayed, 437 Al Nahyan, Zayed bin Sultan, 437 Naivasha Treaty, 407 Najibullah, Mohammad, 236 Namangani, Juma, 81 Namibia, 303–304 Nanjing (Nanking), Treaty of, 192 Nasrallah, Sheikh Hassan, 223 Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 20, 23, 24, 25, 41, 45, 47, 55, 133, 170, 219, 222, 233, 308–309, 323, 351, 356, 438 National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), 366 National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC), 151 National Advancement Party (PAN), 183 National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, 97 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), xxxiii, 400, 401 National African Company, 313 National African Union of Independent Mozambique, 156 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 66, 73, 74, 94, 97, 245, 285, 286, 292 National Association of Evangelicals, 65, 174 National Cancer Institute, 6, 316 National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation, 340 National Consultative Council (NCC), 130 National Council for Resistance, 163 National Day of Protest (NDP), 281 National Defense Commission (NDC), 247 National Defiance Campaign, 4 National Democratic Alliance (NDA), 227 National Democratic Union of Mozambique, 156 National Farmworkers Association, 70 National Institute of Agrarian Reform, 184 National Islamic Front (NIF), 13, 407
Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), 135 National League for Democracy (NLD), 46 National Liberation Front (FLN), 223 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 316 National Opposition Union (UNO), 312 National Organization for Women (NOW), 140, 151, 366 National Organization of Cypriot Fighters (EOKA), 113, 277, 430 National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), 266 National Peasant Confederation (CNC), 208, 290 National Progress Party, 87 National Rainbow Coalition, 239 National Roundtable Talks, 128 National Salvation Front (NSF), 50, 130 National Security Decision Directive 17, 106 National Society for the Rapid Realization of Korean Independence, 363 National Student Strike Committee, 414 National Union for Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), 17 National Union of Farmers and Ranchers (UNAG), 311 National Unity Movement, 84 National Volunteers Corps (RSS), 227 National Women’s Party (NWP), 139, 140 National Youth Administration, 281 Nation of Islam, 279 Native Americans, 16–17, 41, 323 Native Representative Council, 3 NATO Individual Partnership Action Plan, 32 NATO Partnership for Peace, 32, 51 NATO-Russia Joint Council, 321 Natural and Manmade Environmental Disasters, M185 Navarre, Henri, 204 Nazarbayev, Nursultan, 81, 82 Nazi-Soviet Pact, 52, 397 Ndizeye, Ntare V, 379 Negritude (négritude), 149 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 55, 115–116, 160, 161, 201, 202, 207, 271, 296, 305, 306–307, 386, 421 Nehru, Motilal, 306 Nehru Peace Award, 46 Nehru Report, 306 Neo-Destour Party, 69 Nepal, 201 civil war in, 307–309 Neruda, Pablo, 259 Nervi, Pier Luigi, 38 Netanyahu, Binyamin, 22 Neuhaus, Kety, 30 Neumann, John von, xxxiv
Neves, Tancredo, 71 New Christian Right, 228 New Deal, 15, 16, 177 New Frontier, 238 New Haven Railroad, 279 Ne Win, 46, 305–306 New Islamists, 223 New Jewel Movement, 181 New Left, 51 Newly Emerging Forces (NEF), 411 New Society, 287–288 New Territory, 192 Newton, Huey, 66 New Zealand, 18–19, 43, 45, 104, 382 Ngendandumwe, Pierre, 379 Ngo Dinh Diem, 204, 238, 309, 310, 449, 450 Ngo Dinh Nhu, xli, 238 Nguyen Ai Quoc, 191 Nguyen Cao Ky, 310, 449 Nguyen Huu Tho, 206 Nguyen Van Thieu, 310, 449, 450 Nicaragua, 111, 137, 154–155, 181, 214– 215, 259 contra war in, 105–106, 137, 214, 310, 312, 362 revolution in, 105, 310–312 Nichols, Mike, 104 Nidal, Abu, 28 Niemeyer, Oscar, 41 Nigeria, 5, 64, 266, 279, 312–315 Nile Basin Dispute, 147 9/11 Commission, 461 9/11 terrorist attacks, 9, 41, 75, 85, 88, 99, 102, 185, 236, 276, 297, 309, 349, 384, 394, 412, 440, 462–464 Ninety-Day Detention Laws, 281 Nixon, Richard M., 10, 16, 27, 56, 72, 92, 97, 121, 122, 153, 236, 238, 310, 315–318, 347, 364–365, 385, 386, 442, 452, 458–459, 475 Nixon, Thelma Catherine “Pat,” 315 Nixon, Tricia, 315 Nixon Doctrine, 317 Niyazov, Saparmurat, 85–87 Nkomo, Joshua, 296–297, 364 Nkrumah, Kwame, 5, 55, 170, 282, 318, 427 Nobel Prize, xxxvii, 4, 19, 30, 46, 79, 116, 128, 131, 173, 245, 251, 258, 268, 269, 271, 289–290, 317, 355 Noia, Pepa, 30 Nonaligned Movement, 55, 202, 312 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), xxxvii, 117, 422 Noriega, Manuel, 322–324, 385, 426 Norodom Sihanouk (king of Cambodia), 204, 205, 310, 317 North, Oliver, 215 North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC), 320
North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC), 320 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), xxxviii, 43, 77, 210, 320–321, 473 North Atlantic Council (NAC), 321 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), xl, 18, 34, 35, 49, 50, 51, 53, 100, 113, 150, 164, 166, 169, 179, 190, 321–322, 341, 342, 344, 349, 377, 403, 430, 436, 443–444, 456, 457, 462–471 Northern Alliance, 2 Northern Expedition, 272 Northern Ireland, 220 North Korea, 76, 100, 103–104, 232, 243–244, 247–248, 249, 334, 411, 442, 443 North Vietnam, 103–104, 191, 205, 206, 278, 317, 396, 447–448, 450, 451 Norway, 164 Novotny,´ Antonín, 346 nuclear disarmament, 120–122 nuclear energy, xxxiv Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NNPT), 35, 120, 214, 248 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, 238 nuclear weapons, xl, 18, 101, 109–110, 120–122, 203, 248, 322, 367, 369 Nujomo, Sam, 303 Numeiri, Jaafar, 322–323, 407, 428 Nunavut Territory, Canada, 77, 323–324 Nuñez, Carlos, 383 Nyasaland, 54 Nyerere, Julius Kambarage, 170, 282, 324, 435 O Obasanjo, Olusegun, 314 Obote, Apollo Milton, 433, 434 Obregón, Alvaro, 290 Öcalan, Abdullah, 253, 418, 430 Occupied Territories, 25, 26, 29, 30, 332, 333, 358 Ochuka, Hezekiah, 239 O’Connor, Sandra Day, 361 October War, 206 Odumegwu-Ojukwu, Chukwuemeka, 64 Odumegwu-Ojukwu, Emeka, 314 Office of Minority Business Enterprise, 316 Official Languages Act, 77, 354 Ogoni, 314 Ohrid Peace Accords, 51 oil industry, xxxi, xxxvi, xxxviii, xlii, 9, 17, 23, 32, 40, 64, 74, 75, 111, 147, 209, 219, 241, 255, 260, 262, 263, 295, 315, 327–328, 362, 374, 377, 384, 437, 467 Oil Supply and Demand, M183 Ojukwu, Odemugwu, 314
Index Okalik, Paul, 323 Okello, Bazilio, 435 Okello, Tito, 435 Oklahoma City, terrorist bombing in, 418, 462 Okuma Shigenobu, 267 Oliveira Salazar, António de, 343 Olmert, Ehud, 23, 213 Olympic Games, 2, 34, 37, 38, 91, 195, 229, 325–327, 332, 393, 410, 414 Olympio, Sylvanus, 425 Omar, Mullah, 236, 418 “Omega Point,” 415 Ometo, 142 ONE, Inc., 164 Open Housing Act, 178 Operaio, Potere, 108 Operation Abolition (1960), 154 Operation Alba, 51 Operational Command for the Restoration of Security and Order (Kopkamtib), 206 Operation Anvil, 239 Operation Bojinka, 462 Operation Desert Claw, 215 Operation Desert Sabre, 185 Operation Desert Shield, 184 Operation Desert Storm, 185 Operation Enduring Freedom, 464 Operation Gibraltar, 48, 207 Operation Greenhouse, 34 Operation Iraqi Freedom, 185 Operation Just Cause, 320 Operation Pantomime, 157 Operation “Vittles,” 59 “Operation Wetback,” 70 Operation Whirlwind, 197 opium, 3, 123, 124 Opium War, 194 Opletal, Jan, 129 Orange Revolution, 436 Orazov, Hudaiberdi, 86 Order of the Chrysanthemum, 362 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 136 Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC), 286 Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), 33, 83 Organization of African Unity (OAU), 4, 5, 291, 314, 318, 324, 353, 434 Organization of American States (OAS), 106, 328–329, 385 Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC), 327 Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), 221 Organization of Latin American Solidarity (OLAS), 259 Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), 71, 101, 184, 327–328, 384, 422, 437
495
Oriental Orthodox Church, 133 Oromo, 142 Ortega, Daniel, 311, 312, 383 Ortega, Humberto, 383 Orthodox Church, 51, 435, 437 Orthodox Party, 80 Orwell, George, 99 Osaka Action Agenda, 43 Oslo Accords, 22, 28, 30, 212, 223, 332, 358 Osman Daar, Aden Abdullah, 392 Ospina Pérez, Mariano, 103, 157 Oswald, Lee Harvey, 238–239 Otan Party, 82 Otto, Kristin, 326 Ottoman Empire, 112, 140, 184, 253, 263 Oufkir, Mohammad, 294 Outer Space Treaty, 102 Overseas Workers Association, 191 Ovett, Steve, 326 Owens, Jesse, 326 Özal, Turgut, 430, 431 P Pahlavi. See Mohammad Reza Pahlavi Pakistan, xlii, 1, 2, 49, 56, 61, 62–64, 123, 180, 201, 203, 222, 240–241, 296, 297, 307, 390, 412, 413–414, 446, 465, 475–476 Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), 47, 48, 62, 63, 331–332, 465 Palach, Jan, 130, 190 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), 21, 22, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 42, 211, 212, 215, 223, 233, 264, 305, 332–333, 418 Palestinian-Israeli-Arab peace negotiations, 20–23 Palestinian populations, 20–23, 189, 211– 213, 223, 233, 264 Palmach, 358 Pan African Congress, 240, 318, 324 Pan African Freedom Movement, 281 pan-Africanism, 5, 55, 170, 313 Panama, 318–320, 426 Panama Canal, 404, 426, 440 Pan-American Union, 80, 328 Pan-Arabism, 48, 55, 233, 353, 438 Panchen Lama, 115, 423 Panchen Rimpoche, 115 Panhellenic Liberation Movement, 179 panic of 1857, 108 Papadopoulos, Georgios, 179 Papandreou, Andreas, 179 Papandreou, George, 178, 179 papermaking, 137 Papuan Customary Council Assembly, 124 Papua New Guinea (PNG), 43, 124 Paris Peace Accords, 232, 449 Paris Peace Agreements, 205, 335
496
Index
Park Chung Hee, 249, 333–334 Parks, Rosa, 94, 292 Parti Québécois (PQ), 355 Pashtuns, 1 Pasternak, Boris, 173 Pasteur Institute, 6 Pastora, Edén, 106 Patel, Vallabhbhai, 201 Pathet Lao, 191, 204, 334–335, 395 Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), 254 Pattakos, Stylianos, 179 Paul VI (pope), 229, 230, 446 Paul, Alice, 139, 151 Paz, Octavio, 258, 414 Paz Estenssoro, Victor, 67–68, 335–336 Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation, Treaty of, 207 Peace Corps, U.S., 177, 336–337 Pearl Harbor, 357, 389 Pearson, Lester B., 428 Peasant International (Krestintern), 191 Peasant Union Committee (CUC), 289 Pei, I. M., 38, 39 Peking Man, 415 Pelosi, Nancy, 151 Peltier, Leonard, 16 Penn, Arthur, 108 Pentagon, xl, xlii, 99, 42, 462 Pentagon Papers, 452 Pentecostalism, 260–261 People Power Movement, The, 284 People’s Communes, 175 People’s Congress, 166 People’s Democratic Party, 87 People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), 235 Peoples First Party, 118 People’s Front for Democracy and Justice, 141 People’s Guerrilla Army, 297 People’s Liberation Army (PLA), 93, 196, 267 People’s Republic of China (PRC), 35, 90, 91, 92, 100, 115, 164, 175, 176, 192, 199, 204, 228, 247, 248, 268, 307, 317, 382, 385, 411, 423, 475 People’s Revolutionary Army (ERP), 259 Peres, Shimon, 22, 30, 358 perestroika, 52, 82, 87, 102, 136, 172, 173 Pérez Jiménez, Marcos, 60 Péron, Juan Domingo, 293, 338 Perot, H. Ross, 75 Pershing II missiles, 322 Persian Gulf, 2 Persian Gulf War, 1991, M175 Peru, 43, 259, 262, 387, 418 pesticides, xxxii, 180, 181 Pétain, Philippe, 163 Phalange, 28 Pham Van Dong, 205
Philip, Prince, duke of Edinburgh, 296 Philippines, 42, 43, 44, 196, 275, 283–284, 382, 389 revolution of, 338–339 Piano, Renzo, 38 Piñera, José, 90 Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, 16, 17 Pinilla, Gustavo Rojas, 103 Pinochet Ugarte, Augusto, 10, 90, 299, 317, 339–340, 418, 421 Pius XII (pope), 229, 369 Planned Parenthood of America, 366 Plan of Barranquilla, 60 Platt Amendment, 111 Plessy v. Ferguson, 73, 286 plutonium bomb, 33 Podgorny, Nikolai, 72 Poindexter, John, 214 Poland, xl, 72–73, 100, 102, 130, 168, 340–341, 362, 391–392 polio, xxxv Pol Pot, 341–342 Pomares, Germán, 383 Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PDFLP), 332 Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), 332 Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command, 332 Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), 14 Popular Sandinista Army (EPS), 311 Popular Unity, 10 Population Registration Act, 3 Porter, Herbert, 459 Port Huron Statement, 405 Portugal, 164, 275, 313, 342–346 post-structuralism, 151 Potala Monastery (Tibet), 115 Potsdam Conference, 58 poverty, xxxii, xxxvi, 42, 177, 245, 260, 262, 263, 390 Pozsgay, Imre, 128 Prabhakaran, Velupillai, 404, 413 Prachanda, 308, 309 Prague Spring, 72, 129, 172, 190, 346–347, 406 Prasad, Rajendra, 201 Prebisch, Raúl, 131 Premadasa, Ranasinghe, 404 presidential impeachment, U.S., 347–348 President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, 239 President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, 336 prisoner of war camps, 387 Progressive Social Party, 252 Protestant churches, 132, 138, 260, 263 “Provisional IRA,” 220 Public Against Violence, 129
Pueblo, USS, 232 Pulitzer Prize, 237, 270 Putin, Vladimir, 122, 348–349, 369, 375, 376, 467 Q Qaddafi, Muammar, 327, 353–354, 435 Qaeda, al-, xxix, 2, 3, 88, 189, 222, 224, 322, 352–356, 403, 412, 418, 419, 440, 462 Qaradawy, Yusuf, al-, 223 Qassem, Abdul Karim, 198, 219, 253 qigong, 148 Qing (Ch’ing) dynasty, 267, 423 Quebec (Québec), 77, 138, 164, 428 sovereignty movement in, 355–356 Querol Lombardero, José Francisco, 403 Quraishi, Zeenat, 236 Qu’ran, 14, 356, 384 Qutb, Sayyid, 14, 221, 356–357 Quwatli, Shukri, al-, 438 R Rabbani, Burhauddin, 236 Rabin, Yitzhak, 21, 22, 30, 211, 358 Racial Unrest and Segregation in America, 1965–1968, M169 Radio Free Europe, 197 Radio Marina, 193 Raffles, Thomas Stamford, 388–389 Rafsanjani, Ali Akbar, 213 Rahman, Abdul, 277, 278 Rahman, Sheikh Mujibur, 47, 48, 56, 63, 207, 331, 355–356, 455, 465 Rahman, Ziaur, 455, 476 Railway Workers’ Movement, 414 Rajk, Laszlo, 197 Rakhmonov, Emomali, 84, 85 Rákosi, Mátyás, 197 Rama IX See Bhumibol Adulyadej Ramadan War, 26 Rambouillet Conference, 471 Ramos, Fidel V., 284 Randall, Dudley, 66 Randolph, A. Philip, 93, 96 Rantissi, Abdel Aziz, al-, 189, 212 Rao, P.V. Narasimha, 203, 389 Rassemblement du Peuple Français (RPF), 163 Rastafarian movement, 282, 306 Ratebzad, Anahita, 235 Rawlings, Jerry, 170 Ray, James Earl, 246 Rayburn, Sam, 231 Reagan, Nancy, 360 Reagan, Ronald, xli, 11, 18, 28, 35, 74, 75, 77, 79, 90, 100, 101, 102, 105, 106, 122, 123, 135, 154, 155, 173, 181–182, 214, 215, 216, 217, 246, 310, 312, 320, 323, 354, 359–362, 412, 420
Reagan Doctrine, 362 Rebel Armed Forces (FAR), 183 Red Army, 108, 199, 242 Red Brigades, 108, 418 Red Crescent, 29, 333 Red Cross, 281 Red-Green coalition, 168 Red Guard, 160, 176, 424 Red Mask, 474 “red power,” 16–17 Red Scare, 367 Red Square, 71, 73 “reeducation,” 176 Refah, 431, 432 Reformation, 132, 138 Rehnquist, William, 366, 367 Reinecke, Ed, 459 Religion in the Modern World, M188 Report of the Guatemalan Commission for Historical Clarification, 182 “resource wars,” 139 Restrepo, Carlos Lleras, 103 retrovirus, 6 Return of the Sinai to Egypt, 1975–1982, M172 Reuter, Ernst, 58, 59 Reuther, Walter P., 15 Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARN), 106 Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), 134, 304, 323, 355 Revolutionary Leftist National Union (UNIR), 157 Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR), 67, 335 Revolutionary National Party (PNR), 208 Revolutionary Organization of Armed People (ORPA), 183 Revolutionary United Front (RUF), 266 Reykjavík Summit, 121 Reynolds, Albert, 221 Reza, Sayyid, 253 Reza Khan (Reza Shah Pahlavi), 295 Rhee, Syngman, 249, 334, 359–360, 443 Rhodesia, 296–297, 364–365, 453, 454 rice, cultivation of, 180 Rice, Peter, 38 Richardson, Elliot, 318, 458 Rikken Kaishinto, 265 Rio Pact, 148 Ríos, Pedro Pablo, 383 Ríos Montt, Éfrain, 183 Rivera, Brooklyn, 106 Rivera, Diego, 41, 258 Rivers, Conrad, 66 Rivonia Trial, 4, 281 Roberts, Oral, 41 Robespierre, Maximilien, 417 Robinson, Bernice, 94 Robinson, Jackie, 94 Robinson, Walter, 443 Rockefeller, Nelson, 154
Index Rockefeller Foundation, 180 Rodney, Walter, 131 Rodriguez Zapatero, Jose Luis, 403 Roe v. Wade, 107, 150–151, 361, 366– 367 Rogers, Richard, 38 Rogers, William, 26, 443 Roh Moo-hyun, 251 Roh Tae Woo, 250 Rojas Pinilla, Gustavo, 103 Romania, 49, 50, 100, 102, 129–130, 145, 285, 457 romanticism, 258 Rome, Treaty of, 143, 144, 145 Romero, Oscar, 135, 386 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, xxxv, xxxix, 93, 99, 165, 210 Roosevelt, Theodore, 363 Rose, Andrew, 144 Rosen, Carl Gustav, von, 64 Rosenberg, Ethel, 287, 367–368 Rosenberg, Julius, 287, 367–368 Rostow, Walter, 11, 131 Royal Lao Government (RLG), 334 Royal Niger Company, 313 Ruby, Jack, 239 Rucci, Jose, 293 Ruckelshaus, William, 458 Ruiz, Faustino, 383 Ruiz, Henry, 383 rural-urban migration, 261 Rural Workers Association (ATC), 311 Russell, Richard, 451 Russia, 43, 121, 248, 255–257, 348–349 See also Soviet Union Russian Federation, 369–379, 370 Russian Revolution, 424 Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, 369, 370 Rustin, Bayard, 96 Rutskoi, Aleksandr, 372 Rwagsore, Louis, 379 Rwanda, xlii, 118, 119, 291, 379–380 Rybkin, Ivan, 373 S Sabah family, al-, 184, 254–255 Sabin, Albert, xxxv Sabotage Act, 281 Sadat, Anwar el-, 21, 22, 23, 42, 79, 134, 222 Saddawi, Nawal, al-, xxxvii Sahel, ecological crisis in, 381 Said, Nuri al-, 219 Sa’id, Sheikh, 253 Saigo Takamori, 265 Saigon, fall of, 153, 205 Sakharov, Andrey, 72 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, 31, 46 Saleh, Ali Abdullah, 468
497
Salesian Order, 31 Salinas, Carlos, 473 Salk, Jonas, xxxv Salossa, J. P., 124 SALT. See Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and Treaties (SALT I/SALT II) San Andrés Accords, 474 Sánchez, Iván, 383 Sanchez, Sonia, 66 Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), 105, 135, 152–153, 182, 259, 310, 311, 312, 378–379 Sandinista revolution, 77, 105, 106, 111 Sandino, Augusto, 153, 310, 383 Sands, Bobby, 220 San Francisco, Treaty of, 382 Sanfuentes, Emilio, 90 Sanger, Margaret, 151 Sankoh, Foday, 266 Sanussi, Sayyid Idris, 267 Sapieha, Adam, 229 Sapoá Accord, 106 Sarawak, 277 sarin gas, 418 Sarraj, Abd al-Hamid, 434 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 9 Satgas Papua, 124 Saudi Arabia, xxxi, 21, 28, 40, 134, 222, 279, 305, 383–384 SAVAK (secret police), 217 Savimbi, Jonas, 18 Savio, Mario, 154, 155 Scheidler, Joseph, 367 Schlafly, Phyllis, 140, 151 Schmitt, Jack, 400 School of Americas Watch (SOA Watch), 385 School of the Americas, 319, 380–381, 422 Schröder, Gerhard, 167 Schuman, Robert, 144, 145 Schwerner, Michael, 401 science and technology, advances in, xxxiii– xxxv Scorsese, Martin, 108 Scott, Giles Gilbert, 38 Screen Actors Guild, 360 Seaga, E. P. G., 282 Seale, Bobby, 66 Sea Tigers, 409 Second Vatican Council, 132, 229, 230, 231, 446 Second Wave Feminism, 149, 151 Secret Army Organization (OAS), 9 Self-Determination Era, 16 Seminole peoples, 17 Sen, Arartya, 180 Senanayake, Don Stephen, 403 Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, 317 Seneca Falls Convention, 139, 149
498
Index
Senior Officials Meeting on Transnational Crime (SOMTC), 45 Separate Administrative Region (SAR), 229 September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, xlii, 9, 41, 75, 85, 88, 99, 102, 185, 236, 276, 297, 309, 322, 349, 384, 394, 412, 440, 462–464 Serbia, 49, 51–52, 469–471 Service Employees International Union (SEIU), 16 Services Bureau (Makhtab al-Khidimat, MAK), 12 Seventeen-Point Agreement, 115, 423 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), 460 Sèvres, Treaty of, 253 Shaaba Farms, 190, 223 Shaba Wars, 291 Shabazz, el-Hajj Malik el-, 278 Shafik, Doria, xxxvi Shagari, Shehu, 314 Shakkur, Yusuf, 26 Shamir, Yitzhak, 22 Shanghai Communiqué, 317, 385–386, 443 Sharansky Natan. See Shcharansky, Anatoly Sharia/Islamic law, 255, 384, 407 Shari’ati, Ali, 216 Sharif, Nawaz, 203, 208, 301 Sharm al-Sheikh, 24 Sharon, Ariel, 23, 26, 28, 212, 213 Sharpeville Massacre, 4, 281 Shastri, Lal Bahadur, 48, 158, 202, 207, 386–387, 413, 414 Shazly, Saad el-, 26 Shcharansky, Anatoly, 72 Sheffield, HMS, 147 Al Shehri, Walid, 462 Shepard, Alan B., 399 Shermarke, Abdirashid Ali, 393 Shi’i Muslims, 27, 28, 32, 83, 187, 190, 191, 199, 213, 214, 217, 219, 222, 241, 253, 263, 264, 417, 429 Shikhmuradov, Boris, 86 Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso), 259, 262, 387, 418 Shiva, Vandana, 180 Shriver, Sargent, 336 Shukairy, Ahmed, 332 Shultz, George, 214 Siad Barre, Mohamed, 194, 393 Sidamo, 142 Sierra, Juan Roa, 157 Sierra Leone, 270 Norodom Sihanouk, 204, 205, 301, 317 Sikhs, 159, 160, 203, 390, 418, 445 Siles Zuazo, Hernán, 67, 336 Silva, Luiz Inácio Lula da, 388 Sin, Jaime, 288, 343 Sinai Peninsula, 21, 24 Singapore, xxxviii, 43, 44, 165, 277, 388–389
Singh, Manmohan, 160, 203, 389–390 Singh, Vishwanath Pratap, 203 Singh, Zail, 159 Single-Article Bill, 295 Single European Act, 144 Sinhala Only Act, 404 Sin Ik-hui, 360 Sinn Féin, 220, 221 Sino-Indian War, 202, 206, 383 Sino-Japanese War, 272 Sino-Portuguese Joint Liaison Group, 275 Sino-Soviet Border War, 440 Sino-Soviet Treaty of 1950, 390–391 Sipple, Billy, 154 Siqueiros, David, 41, 258 Sirica, John, 458 Sirleaf, Ellen Johnson, xxxvii Sisters of Loretto, 416 sit-in movement, 95 Six-Days War, 5 SLATE student party, 154, 155 slaves/slavery, 54, 137, 151, 255, 313, 396, 425 smallpox, xxxv smashing of the Gang of Four, 160 Smith, Ian, 296–297, 364, 365, 453, 454 Smuts, Jan, 3 Sneevliet, Henk, 205 Soares, Mário, 345, 346 Sobchak, Anatoly, 348 Sobell, Morton, 367 Soccer War, 135 Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland, 128 Social Democratic Party (SPD), 58, 168 Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahariya, 354 Socialist Unity Party (SED), 58, 127 Socialist Youth Union, 129 Social Security Law, 20 Society for Human Rights, The, 164 Society of Patriots, 265 Society of Saint Frances de Sales (Salesians), 31 Solidarity movement, 73, 130, 168, 341, 362, 391–392, 457 Somalia, 13, 143, 193, 194, 222, 392–394 Somocistas, 106 Somoza, Luis, 152 Somoza Debayle, Anastasio, 135, 152, 311, 379 Song Ping, 194 Son Ngoc Thanh, 204 Sotelo, Leopoldo Calvo, 403 Souder, Mark, 123 Souphanouvong, Prince, 204, 205, 335 South Africa, 3, 5, 7, 41, 64, 99, 156, 280– 282, 303, 453–454 South Africa under Apartheid, M170 South America, xxxi, xxxii, xxxvi
South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), 403 South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), 394–395, 446 Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), 396 Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), 94, 96, 245, 292, 405 Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR), 320 Southern Rhodesian African National Congress, 364 South Korea, xxxii, 43, 104, 248–251, 333–334, 362–363, 411, 443–444 South Lebanon Army (SLA), 27, 190, 264 South Vietnam, 205, 309, 310, 449–450 South West African People’s Organization (SWAPO), 303 Souvanna Phouma, Prince 335 Soviet Republics of Central Asia, 81 Soviet Union, xxxi, xxxiii, xxxix, xli, 1, 2, 11, 12, 17, 22, 24, 27, 32, 34, 35, 39, 41, 52, 57, 58–60, 71–73, 93, 99–102, 103–104, 109–110, 111– 112, 127, 128, 134, 135, 136, 141, 142, 143, 145, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 169, 172, 173, 174, 175, 191, 192, 196, 197, 198, 199, 222, 235– 236, 238–239, 242–243, 247, 248, 249, 251, 285, 361–362, 367–368, 382, 390–391, 412, 413–414, 418, 421, 442, 448, 456–457, 475 dissolution of the, 99, 396–398 Soweto Uprising, 4 Soyinka, Wole, xxxix space exploration, xxxiii–xxxiv, 34, 238, 316, 398–402, 401 Spain, 161, 343, 398–399 civil war in, 38, 421 Special Administrative Region (SAR), 192 Spínola, António de, 344, 345 Spitz, Mark, 326 Spread of Democracy and Women’s Suffrage, The, M190–191 Spriggs, Ed, 66 Sputnik, xxxiii, xl, 57, 243, 394 Sri Lanka, 159, 203, 399–400, 409 stagflation, 79 Stalin, Joseph, xxxix, 32, 52, 71, 81, 89, 100, 102, 104, 165, 173, 197, 242, 243, 244, 255, 288, 390, 424 Starr, Kenneth, 348 START. See Strategic Arms Reduction Talks and Treaties Star Wars, xli, 35, 101. See also Strategic Defense Initiative State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), 46, 306 State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), 46 Statute of Westminster, 104 Stepashin, Sergei, 348, 375
Stern, Andrew, 16 Stewart, Potter, 366 St. John of the Cross, 229 St. Lawrence Seaway, 404 Stonewall Riots, 164 Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and Treaties (SALT I/SALT II), 2, 18, 35, 72, 121, 122, 317 Strategic Arms Reduction Talks and Treaties (START), 35, 122 Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), xli, 35, 101, 102, 362. See also Star Wars Strategic Influence, The Office of, 76 Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty, 122 Student Christian Association, 280 student movements, U.S., xxxvii, 48, 95, 405–406, 414 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), 95, 96, 97, 154, 405 Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), 154, 405 Sturgis, Frank, 458 Suarez, Adolfo, 402–403 Suárez, Hugo Banzer, 336 suburbanization, U.S., 48, 402–403 Sudan, xlii, 13, 116–117, 279, 322–323, 412, 428–429 civil wars in, 407–408 Suez Canal, 23, 26, 45, 134, 305 Suez Canal Crisis, 1956, M165 Sufism, 253 Sugami, Satam, 458 Suharto, Haji Mohamed, 44, 208, 408, 409 Suhrawardy, H. S., 46 suicide attacks/bombings, 22, 23, 28, 189, 413, 419 Sukarno, Ahmed, 55, 124, 205, 408–409 The Sullivans, USS, 14 Summon, Helen, 281 Sunni Muslims, 11, 27, 42, 83, 187, 253, 429, 460 “Sunni Triangle,” 187 Sunshine Policy, 248 Sun Yat-sen, 192, 272, 475 Supreme Council for National Reconstruction (SCNR), 334 Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Eu rope (SHAPE), 322 Suyat, Cecilia, 286 Svoboda, Ludwig, 346 Sweden, 164 Sweeny, John J., 16 Syria, 21, 24–26, 27, 41–42, 47, 134, 189, 213, 233, 253, 264, 289, 433–434 T Taba proposals, 22 tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs), 122 Taft-Hartley Act, 14, 15 Taif Agreement, 28, 264
Index Taisho Democracy, 265 Taiwan (Republic of China), xxxviii, 43, 118, 192, 385–386, 411–412. See also China, Republic of (ROC) Taiwan Relations Act, 444 Tajikistan, 1, 81, 83–85, 398 Takht, Sikh Akal, 159 Talabani, 255, 256, 430 Taliban, 2, 3, 13, 85, 99, 222, 223, 236, 322, 412, 418, 419, 464 Tambo, Oliver, 280, 281 Tamil Nadu, 386 Tamil Tigers, 159, 404, 412–413, 418 Tanganyika African National Union (TANU), 324 Tantric Buddhism, 115 Tanzania, United Republic of 64, 324 Taraki, Nur Mohammad, 235 Taruc, Luis, 196 Tashkent Agreement, 48, 202, 207, 331, 383, 413–414 Tawil, Suha, 29 Taylor, Charles, 266 Taylor, Claudia Alta, 231 Teachers’ Movement, 414 Teamsters Union, 15, 16 Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, 415 Tejero, Antonio, 403 Tekebaev, Omurbek, 83 Temporary Security Zone, 141 Ten Years’ War, 108 Tenzin Gyatso/Dalai Lama, 14th, 115–116 Teresa of Calcutta, Mother, 415–416 Tereshkova, Valentina, 399 Ter-Petrosyan, Levon, 33 terrorism, xlii, 12, 22, 23, 45, 75, 76, 85, 99, 185, 222, 236, 266, 277, 308, 326, 359, 384, 414, 417–419, 438, 440, 462–464 Test Ban Treaty, 121 “test tube” babies, xxxv Tet Offensive, 232, 316, 451, 452 Thailand, 43, 44, 61–62, 123 Thanarat, Sarit, 62 Thani, Hamad bin Khalifa, al-, 9 Thatcher, Dennis, 419 Thatcher, Margaret, 90, 101, 192, 220, 418, 419–421 Thembu, 280 thermonuclear bomb, 34 Thiong’o, Ngugi wa, xxxix Third Reich, 165 Third-Wave Feminism, 151–152 Third World, 19, 417, 421–422, 461 38th parallel, 249, 251 Three Gorges Dam, xxxii, 19, 422 Three Mile Island nuclear accident, xxxiv, 136 Thugees, 417 Thurmond, Strom, 73, 320 Tiananmen Square, 39
499
Tiananmen Square massacre, 92, 120, 195, 422–423, 460 Tibet, 101, 115, 195 Tibetan Revolt, 423–424 Tigermen, 293 Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF), 194 Tigre, 141 Till, Emmett, 94 Timoshenko, Julia, 436 Tito, Dennis, 401 Tito, Marshal (Josip Broz), 55, 72, 198, 309, 424–425, 469 Tizón, Aurelia, 338 Tlass, Mustafa, 41 Tlatelolco massacre, 209, 414–415 Togo, 425–426 Tokaimura nuclear accident, 136 Tokés, László, 129 Tokugawa Shogunate, 265 Tokyo Round, 164 Tolle, John, 363 Tomic, Radomiro, 10 Torrijos, Omar, 319, 426 Touré, Ahmed Sékou, 426–427 Touré, Samory, 427 Tower Commission, 215 Trans-Karakoram Tract, 207 Transportation and Infrastructure in the Modern World, M184 Trinity, 29 “Triple A” paramilitary group, 293 Trouillot, Mildred, 31 Trudeau, Margaret, 428 Trudeau, Pierre, 428 Trujillo, Rafael, 61, 68 Truman, Harry S., 15, 58, 93, 94, 100, 164, 251, 284 Truman Doctrine, 429 Trumka, Richard, 16 Truth Commission Report on El Salvador, 285 Tsang, Donald, 192 Tshombe, Moïse, 273, 291 Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin, 398 tsunamis, 404 Tsvangirai, Morgan, 365 Tudeh Party, 216 Tudjman, Franjo, 51, 470 “Tulip Revolution,” 83 Tumbuka, 54 Tung Chee-hwa, 192 Tunisia, 8, 12, 68–69 Tunner, William H., 59 Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), 387 Turabi, Hassan ’abd Allah al, 13, 223, 412, 428–429 Turbay, Gabriel, 157 Turkey, 32, 49, 122, 147, 164, 223, 238, 253, 277, 418, 429–432
500
Index
Turkmenistan, 1, 81, 85–87, 398 Turner Joy, USS, 451 Tutsis, 291, 379 26th July Movement, 80, 111, 153, 183, 293, 383, 414 Tydings-McDuffie Act, 196 Tyranowski, Jan, 229 Tzeltal Revolt, 473 U ‘Ubaydallah of Nehri, Sheikh, 253 Ubico, Jorge, 20 Uganda, 291, 379, 433–435 Ukraine, 122, 370, 398, 435–437 Ulbricht, Walter, 166 Ulema, Nahdatul, 206 Umar, Mullah Muhammad, 412 Umkonto we Sizwe (MK), 4, 291 Understanding on Emergency Action (Safeguards), 320 UNESCO, 37, 311 Union Carbide, xxxiv, 136 Union Federation of Bolivian Tin Workers (FSTMB), 67 Union Nationale des Forces Populaire (UNFP), 294 Union of Palestinian Students, 29 Union of Popular Forces, 84 Union of Right-Wing Forces, 33 Union Treaty, 394 United Arab Emirates (UAE), 40, 437 United Arab Republic (UAR), 41, 47, 134, 219, 279, 305, 437–438 United Automobile Workers (UAW), 15, 16 United Democratic Front (UDF), 4 United Farmworkers of America (UFW), 70 United Fruit Company, 20 United Indochinese Front, 205 United Kingdom, 104 United Malays National Organization (UNMO), 277 United Mine Workers (UMW), 15 United National Independence Party (UNIP), 237 United Nations and the World, The, M176–177 United Nations (UN), xxxvii, xli, 5, 18, 20, 21, 29, 31, 37, 52, 61, 63, 65, 74, 92, 100, 101, 106, 115, 117, 119, 120, 121, 123, 124, 130, 141, 142, 151, 165, 179, 182, 183, 184, 185, 190, 193, 201, 207, 211, 213, 214, 218, 221, 231, 247, 264, 266, 267, 273, 279, 291, 303, 307, 309, 343, 359, 362, 370, 379, 380, 385, 393, 403, 407, 408, 413, 425, 429, 438–440, 443, 460, 462, 466, 470 UN Atomic Energy Commission, 99, 120 UN Charter, 439, 440
UN Climate Change Conference, 99 UN Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, 123 UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), 381 UN Economic and Social Council Resolution 104, 131 UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organizations (UNESCO), xxxix UN General Assembly, 182, 267, 439, 440 UN Human Rights Commission, 30 UN India-Pakistan Observation Mission (UNIPOM), 414 UN Interim Force in Lebanon, 264 UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP), 414 UN Mission of Support in East Timor (UNMISET), 130 UN National Conference on the Human Environment, 136 UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR), 470 UN Resolution 242, 17, 22 UN Sahelian Office (UNSO), 381 UN Security Council, xl, 27, 35, 48, 100, 182, 185, 203, 251, 387, 439, 440 UN Temporary Executive Authority (UNTEA), 124 UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET), 130 United People’s Front (UPF), 308 United Progressive Grand Alliance, 313 United States, xxxiii, xxxix, 18–19, 43, 58–60, 242, 248, 249, 255, 284–285, 320–321, 380–381, 404, 446, 450–452 Agency for International Development, 180 Army Caribbean School, 384 Army School of the Americas (SOA), 385 Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), 16 Coast Guard, 123 Constitution and Amendments, 73, 139, 151 Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), 123 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 246, 287, 357 Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), 76 National Security Agency, 76 National Security Council (NSC), 214 President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), 7 relations with China, 442–443 Supreme Court decisions, 73, 139, 151, 178, 245, 285, 287, 292, 366–367 United States–Japan Security Treaty, 382 United States–ROC Mutual Defense Treaty, 118
United States v. Nixon, 458 U.S.-and Latin America, The, 1954– 2000, M167 USA PATRIOT Act, 76, 463 U.S.-Japan Mutual Defense Treaty, 441–442 U.S.-Republic of Korea Mutual Defense Treaty, 118, 443–444 U.S.-ROC Mutual Defense Treaty, 118, 444 U.S.-Taiwan Mutual Defense Treaty, 444 United Tajik Opposition (UTO), 84, 85 Universal Colored People’s Association, 66 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 5, 440 U Nu, 441 Upward Bound, 178 uranium “gun-type” bomb, 33 urbanization, xxxv, 263 Urriolagoitia, Mamerto, 335 Uruguay, 164, 257 U.S. and Latin America, The, 1954–2000, M167 Ute peoples, 16 U Thant, 24 Utzon, Jørn, 40 Uzbekistan, 1, 81, 87–88, 173 V Vajpayee, Atal Bihari, 207–208, 227, 445–446 Vajrayana, 115 Valdés, Miguel Alemán, 208, 209 Valentino, Rudolph, 257 Valle, Juan José, 293 Vanara Sena, 158 Vance, Cyrus, 216 van den Bergh, H. J., 454 Vargas, Getúlio, 252 Vatican II Council, 132, 229, 230, 231, 446 Velasco Ibarra, José, 447 Velásquez, Fidel, 209 Velvet Revolution, 129, 190 Venecia, Jose De, 276 Venezuela, 60–61, 88–89, 262, 263 “Venona Cables,” 364–365 Verdun, Battle of, 163 Versailles Treaty, 382 Verwoerd, Henrik Frensch, 453 Victoria of Hesse, 295 Vides Casanova, Carlos Eugenio, 385 Vientiane Action Program, 45 Vietcong, xli, 278 Vietminh, 191, 447, 448, 450 Vietnam, xl, xli, 8, 40, 43, 44, 72, 92–93, 97, 111, 157, 164, 191–192, 204–205, 232, 238, 317, 341, 395, 452–453 Democratic Republic of, 447–449 Republic of, 166, 449–450
Vietnamese-Chinese conflict, 92–93 Vietnam War, xxxvii, xli, 11, 75, 100, 101, 107, 191, 204–205, 231, 245, 250, 278, 299, 316, 335, 395, 405, 406, 418, 440, 442, 443, 450–452 Vietnam War, The, M171 Villaflor Devincenti, Azucena, 30 Villarzú, Juan, 90 Vincennes, USS, 216 Vining, Elizabeth Gray, 8 Viren, Lase, 326 Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), 177 Vo Nguyen Giap, 204, 448, 451, 452–453 Voorhis, Jerry, 315 Voroshilov, Kliment, 71–72 Vorster, B. J., 449–450 voters/voting, 97, 107, 405 Voting Rights Act, 97, 107, 178, 245, 405 W Wade, Henry, 366 Wafd Party, 133 Wahhabism, 222 Wahid, Abdurrahmam, 208 Wailing Wall, 23 Wajed, Sheikh Hasina, 455 Wajid, Sheikh Hasina, 47 Waldorf Statement, 287 Wałe˛sa, Lech, 73, 128, 341, 391, 392 Wallace, George, 96, 316 Wangari Muta Maathai, 19 Wang Hongwen (Wang Hung-wen), 160, 176 warfare, xxxix–xlii Warlord Era, 272 War Measures Act, 352 “War of the Thousand Days,” 103 war on drugs, 103 War on Terror (Terrorism), 75, 102, 276, 297, 309, 349, 394, 403, 463, 464 Warren, Earl, 73, 231, 239, 286 Warren Commission, 153, 239 Warsaw Pact, xl, 34, 72, 100, 128, 166, 198, 321, 322, 346, 347, 392, 396, 406, 456–457 Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO), 456 Washington Summit, 122 Washington Treaty, 321, 322 Watergate scandal, 154, 317–318, 347–348, 452, 458–459 Watson, James, xxxv Wazir, Khalil al-, 29 Weapons of Mass Destruction, 2007, M186 Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), 185, 187 Weathermen, 406, 418 Weather Underground, 406 Wei Jingsheng, 91 Weinberg, Bill, 474
Index Weinberg, Jack, 107, 155 Weinberger, Caspar, 214 Welch, Joseph, 288 Wen Jiabao (Wen Chia-pao), 459–460 Werror, Moses, 124 West Bank, 29, 211, 212, 233, 332, 358, 363, 418 West Berlin, 101 Western Balkans, 49 Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC), 385 Western Saharan War, 460–461 West Germany, 58–60, 165, 166, 285, 456 West Irian/Dutch New Guinea, 124 Westmoreland, William, 232, 451 West Pakistan, 359 West Timor, 408 “wet-foot/dry-foot” policy, 109 Wheelock, Jaime, 311, 383 White, Byron, 366, 367 White, Edward, 399 White, Frank D., 98 White Hand, 183 White House Drug Control Policy Office, 124 White Revolution, 218 white supremacists, 107 Wilkins, Maurice, xxxv William J. Clinton Foundation, 99 Williams, Hosea, 96 Wilson, Woodrow, 99 Windscale nuclear accident, 136 Wojtyła, Karol Józef, 229. See also John Paul II (pope) Wolfensohn, James, 88 women suffrage and rights of, 41, 69, 134, 139– 140, 149–152, 289 working populations of, xxxvi, 169 Woodstock, xxxix Woodward, Bob, 317, 458 Worker’s Party (PT), 388 World AIDS Conference, 7 World Bank, xxxvi, xxxviii, 7, 19, 43, 56, 81, 88, 119, 125, 164, 171, 180, 209, 240, 314, 388, 403, 436, 461 World Bank Group, 459 World Christian Missionary Conference, 132 World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), 136 World Congress of Students and Youth for Peace and Friendship, 152 World Council of Churches, 132, 133 World Economic Forum, 171, 172 World Health Organization (WHO), 6, 37 World Heritage sites, 37 World Social Forum, 172 World Trade Center (WTC), xlii, 41, 99, 412, 462–464
501
World Trade Organization (WTO), xxxviii, 61, 82, 171, 172, 181, 210, 229, 320, 321, 436 World War I, 415, 424 World War II, xxxii, xxxiii, 1, 19, 34, 37, 58, 97, 100, 101, 133, 134, 139, 191, 254, 259, 265, 293, 299, 343, 360, 382, 389, 392, 397, 411, 415, 424 World Youth Days, 231 Wounded Knee, South Dakota, 16 Wu, Harry, 91 Wye Memorandum, 22 Wyman, Jane, 360 X Xhosa, 280, 281 Y Yahya Khan, Muhammad, 47, 48, 63, 317, 331, 359, 465 Yalta Agreement, 243–244, 249 Yalta Conference, xxxix, 165 Yamani, Ahmad Zaki, 327 Yamasaki, Minoru, 41 Yang Shang, 423 Yanukovych, Viktor, 349, 436 Yao, 54 Yao Wenyuan (Yao Wen-yuan), 162, 176 Yassin, Sheikh, 189, 212, 223 Yeager, Chuck, xxxiii Yeltsin, Boris, 104, 122, 173, 174, 348, 369, 370, 371, 372, 373, 375, 378, 397, 398, 466–467 Yemen, 13, 47, 134, 141, 419, 438, 467–468 Yen Chia-kan, 90 Ye Qun (Yeh Chun), 176 Yom Kippur War, 26, 79, 289, 317, 358 Yoruba, 64, 312, 314 Yoshida Shigeru, 265, 440, 468 Young Communist League, 71 Young Turks, 253 Yousef, Ramzi, 462 Youth for Christ, 174 Yuan dynasty, 423 Yudhoyono, Susilo Bambang, 124 Yugoslavia, 1945–2006, M182 Yugoslavia, xlii, 39, 103–104, 424–425 breakup and war in, 468–471 Yun Po-sun, 334 Yuschenko, Viktor, 436 Yusuf, Allal al-, 293 Z Zagros Mountains, 253 Zahir, Mohammad, 235 Zahir Shah, Mohammed, 1, 2 Zaïre, 118–119, 291 Zambia, 17, 64, 237 Zapatistas, 262, 290, 320, 473–474
502
Index
Zardari, Asif Ali, 62 Zarqawi, Abu Musab al-, 187 Zawahiri, Ayman, 357 Zedillo, Ernesto, 211, 474 Zhang Chunqiao (Chang Ch’un-ch’iao), 162, 176 Zhao Ziyang (Chao Tzu-jang), 228, 423, 460 Zhelev, Zhelyu Mitev, 129
Zhirinovsky, Vladimir, 373 Zhivkov, Todor, 53, 129 Zhou Enlai (Chou En-lai), 59, 115, 119, 176, 196, 267, 475 Zhu Rongji, 460 Zia, Khaleda, 455, 475 Ziauddin, Khwaja, 297 Zia-ul-Haq, Muhammad, 62–63, 331, 475–476
Zimbabwe, 296–297, 364–365, 422 Zionism, 290 Zone of Peace, Freedom, and Neutrality (ZOPFAN), 44 Zurich-London agreements, 117 Zwingli, Ulrich, 132 Zyuganov, Gennadii, 373
Photo Credits U.S. Air Force: 50, 59; U.S. Coast Guard: 123; U.S. Customs and Border Patrol: 463; U.S. Department of Defense: 2, 28, 142, 186, 195, 199, 216, 264, 294, 319, 337, 339, 384, 393, 417, 439, 469; U.S. Library of Congress: 12, 30, 33, 63, 70, 76, 80, 83, 93, 95, 98, 110, 163, 139, 153, 172, 222, 230, 238, 243, 245, 252, 279, 283, 285, 288, 301, 316, 321, 349, 352, 361, 420, 431; Gerald R. Ford Library: 72; George H. W. Bush Presidential Library: 75; Lyndon Baines Johnson Library: 232; Marwan Naamant/AFP/Getty Images: 224; National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Photos: 401; National Archives and Records Administration: 448, 451; Nixon Presidential Materials Project: 459; Photos.com: 137, 167, 180, 202, 211, 250, 254, 256, 308, 325, 355, 371, 446; Stock.xchng (www.sxc.hu): 34, 116, 119, 333, 416; wikimedia: 66, 128, 150, 158, 221, 273, 304, 391, 405.
historical atlas
The Cold War, 1949–1991 M161
M162 China—Border Disputes and the Cultural Revolution, 1948–1983
Indochina War, 1946–1954 M163
M164 The Korean War, 1950–1953
Suez Canal Crisis, 1956 M165
M166 African Independence
The U.S. and Latin America, 1954–2000 M167
M168 Israel Following the 1967 War
Racial Unrest and Segregation in America, 1965–1968 M169
M170 South Africa under Apartheid
The Vietnam War M171
M172 Return of the Sinai to Egypt, 1975–1982
Governments of the Middle East and North Africa M173
M174 The Collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, 1989–1991
Persian Gulf War, 1991 M175
M176 The United Nations and the World
The United Nations and the World M177
M178 Asia: Wars, Political Unrest, and Territorial Disputes, 1945–Present
International Organizations M179
M180 Major Regional Trading Groups
The Kyoto Protocol and CO2 Emissions M181
M182 Yugoslavia, 1945–2006
Oil Supply and Demand M183
M184 Transportation and Infrastructure in the Modern World
Natural and Manmade Environmental Disasters M185
M186 Weapons of Mass Destruction, 2007
Decolonization in South and Southeast Asia, 1947–2000 M187
M188 Religion in the Modern World
Major Terrorist Attacks since 1979 M189
M190 The Spread of Democracy and Women’s Suffrage
The Spread of Democracy and Women’s Suffrage M191
M192 Air Campaign in Kosovo, March 25–June 20, 1999